Growing up, leaving school and how to give your parents grey hair.

The last two or three weeks have been full of events, some very pleasant, some less so. That old saw about life’s rich tapestry has been on my mind. At times the tapestry becomes a tangle of threads and it’s difficult to see the pattern.

So, to start with the worrying bits. The grandson did not get the GCSE results  he had demanded of himself. Not that we, his mother and I, were disappointed, on the contrary. Considering all he has had to cope with over the last six years, any likelihood of him absorbing school subjects was much reduced.  But then came his own ambitions, suddenly announced, (probably as a result of much time spent in A&E for one injury or another.) He wants (wanted) to become a doctor. For that he needed sciences and -  gloom - maths. His grasp of mathematics is about as good as mine, which means he doesn’t have one. The subjects he has a natural aptitude for, like English, Art  and Design, they were dismissed as being ‘no use to him’ and therefore no comfort when he got creditable passes in them. He didn’t do badly in physics and chemistry either but maths, oh dear, oh dear.  

So he declared himself fed up with schooling and determined not to go back to it. He is just sixteen. In Scotland that means he can get married without parental permission and officially leave school. Mother and grandparents held their collective breath in fear. This is the point it can all go horribly wrong. Luckily we are unified in our belief that no good comes of forcing a sixteen year old, especially a stubborn and otherwise sensible one, to do what it doesn’t want to do. The time has come for a little faith in the innate intelligence and good sense of the person he is showing himself to be. Still, it was a nastily worrying moment. 

His next step took our breath away. He fixed himself up with an interview for the Navy. 

He downloaded the necessary forms, filled them in, and persuaded his quaking parent to sign them.  He wants to be a medic - or an engineer..... or...  He was very nearly accepted too. The interviewer was enthusiastic, said he was just the sort of young chap they need. Then he was given some test papers. He passed them all until the b***dy maths.  ‘Come back in six months’ he was told regretfully. ‘If we can see you have been working at your maths  then we’ll see what we can do.’ 

It turns out he has been watching documentaries, youtube clips, researching on the net, about life in the Royal Navy, for two or three years. He knows, as much as he can without the experience, what he is letting himself in for. Sharing fish and chips and a bottle of wine with him last night I was amazed by the details he has picked up.  It still seems ridiculous that this young man who disliked the institutionalised life of school so heartily, would put himself into an organisation that imposes an even stricter discipline and demand for conformity.  

Increasingly, he reminds me of his uncle who was not at all absorbed or engaged by academic subjects as they were taught in school, but once he had a purpose in mind could achieve anything he set his mind to. After years of managing water sports centres he is now on his way to becoming a chartered accountant.

What I do wish schools (governments?) could get over is the emphasis on exams. The school we chose for him was founded by a man with ideals. He saw the importance of developing the whole child, of allowing the full potential of that child to emerge. Nowadays, with league tables and the unnatural emphasis on the certain sort of intelligence that enables people to pass exams, the school has lost its way. At sixteen they are given the impression that a pass or fail will determine the whole of their future. That’s nonsense, but teenagers are intense creatures and take this to heart. It’s dangerous. They learn to define themselves by results and it is hard work to swing the emotional balance, to stop them from writing themselves off as failures.

Writing process

An internet friend sent me a questionnaire to answer for her blog. I don't think she'll mind if I put it here as well. He blog is more read than mine! It was an interesting exercise for me.

What am I working on?

I’ve written an 80,000 word children’s novel pitched for 9 - 12 years about a furry four-armed alien called Yub who, a teenager on his own planet, has a special ability that allows him to travel through space. His planet is dying and all its inhabitants live underground in biospheres built after the Cataclysms (a war) that caused the destruction of the protective atmospheric shield around the planet. Looking for a planet like his own was before the violent changes Yub arrives in the North of Scotland and contacts a teenage boy, Josh, (who is also feeling a bit alien as he is an incomer from the south). With the additional help of another isolated incomer, Leonie, they get Yub’s family and closest friends to Earth and hide them. There are many ups and downs, some humour, and some real-life problems like Leonie’s relationship with her chronically depressed father.

I’ve written it, edited and re-edited, worked on a sequel, and think it is good enough to publish but haven’t enough courage to try sending it to any publishers! My self-confidence comes and goes.

I’m also working on a sort of patchwork novel which gives me a chance to make stories up for the characters that fill my imagination. It’s much more adult but doesn’t yet have a connective ‘voice.’ 

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

That is an extremely difficult question. Quick answer: I’m not sure either of these novels actually differ much from what’s on the market already. Probably because I am older  I will have a more old fashioned approach to writing children’s stories, but I have read a lot and still enjoy teen fiction(Kathy Reich’ ‘Virals’ for instance. ) I love J.K.Rowling’s style and would like to be like her without actually emulating her (if you see what I mean.) What I admire is her talent for spinning a good yarn, for creating characters who are real and walk off the page, for always mixing in touches of humour with drama even when the situation is dire. She has created a world where friendship, loyalty, bravery and good intentions are the most valued qualities. She creates a whole world that children love to lose themselves in. 

In my opinion children need escapism as much as adults and really don’t want ‘real life’ stuff about drugs, getting pregnant, dysfunctional families, or the terrible life of children in war-torn lands, thrust at them constantly. That sort of ‘good for you’ genre reminds me of the books I used to get given as ‘prizes’ at Sunday School, moralising Victorian works like ‘Mary Jones’s Bible.’ They darkened my days - and completely put me off religion I might add!

Why do I write what I do? 

That’s another poser. I’ve written both the children’s story and portions of the adult novel with great enthusiasm and enjoyment. The characters for the latter are composites of people I have met, together with ideas of people I would like to meet, or to be. Their developing psychology amuses me. Probably they are all projections of myself - that’s fine. It’s like being allowed to be multiple-personality-me. I love crime novels so it is shaping into one of those, but I do have to avoid actual police procedures or autopsies because, though I’ve read a lot about both, I don’t want to get into areas that I only half understand. It would distract from the intricacies of the human mind behind the crime and the reactions of the other characters involved one way or another. We shall see.

How does your writing process work?

I used to always be writing something but have never been very good at consistency or discipline. I’m easily distracted by family matters, and daily obligations. It’s been better since I retired properly and I have acres of time to myself - I love that. Once I do hit a hot spot I can write for eight hours a day, coming up for air only for coffee and snacks. I love that. At those times even when I lay down to sleep my mind is busy with the next chapter or event. Then months will go by and I can’t bring myself to add anything or even glance at what I’ve done. During this sort of period I usually write poetry. Recently there have been times when I write nothing. Strangely I think this has come about because I joined a writing group. They are very supportive people and for nearly a year I loved my Tuesday evenings. Then I started to feel full up with other people’s words and my own output dried. I’ve stayed away for two months - it’s coming back.  

So, no words of wisdom here. I’m not a published author, I am an author who has self-published three small collections of folk tales indigenous to this part of the world. I am an author who, if I had had a little more conviction, belief in my self and a proper spine, might have made a name for myself. Not sure that’s going to happen now so perhaps my advice is: perseverance is the key. The ultimate secret!

Pyromania

Inspired by a friend who has stitched poems onto fabric, I have bought myself a pyrography kit and am now looking for suitable slices of wood to burn my (shorter) pieces into. Since it arrived I've realised lots more potential - adding colour and design for instance. What I'm aiming for is something that can hang on the wall, be decorative, but also let the words take centre stage. First I have to get used to using it so - nobody hold their breath. 

Achievements: Few.

Yesterday I took out the trash. Later I fetched in the empty trash can. (SometimesI forget I'm not an American because I watch so many US series on DVD.) 

I also lay in bed comfortably reading a crime novel from cover to cover.  'Broadchurch.' The book of the TV series by Erin Kelly. She's a good writer so although I knew the story it was still an enjoyable, even engrossing, read.

Finally, at 7pm, I did do something creative. I joined a local group putting together a sort of multi-media montage of our town. It was initiated by a ---- um.. er … I'm a little unclear on this …. a student or a professor of the newly formed University of the Highlands and Islands. I came to the group after they had already been through several meetings and found myself enjoying, for once in my life, the feeling of cooperating on something arty, local and possibly of universal interest. There could be similar projects in all small towns and communities to  reflect, give voice to, their pride in their community. 

The idea was that the locals should be the creators and the prof. and student should stand back, helping only when invited, suggesting but not directing. There is lovely original music from violin and saxophone; singing (she wrote her own song and set it to music)  films of dancing on Findhorn beach, a 'coffee-morning' dialogue, (the town is practically famous for its fund-raising weekly coffee-and-cake mornings in the Town Hall), two old boys gurning about the state of the world, and poems by several of the writer's group I belong to, including, I'm proud today, one of mine. 

As I have written virtually nothing for months (in my own defence I have had some health blips) and almost all the feedback I've had from the handful of submissions I've roused myself to make have been: 'Thank you but no thank you', it was nice to have a piece welcomed into the fold and be usefully put to work. 

Probably the very best thing has been the easy feeling of cooperation toward the best result possible in a very short time. No ego-blasts and no prima-donna stuff from any of us - not even me!!

Small Town.

Monday. 

The queue for pensions forms.

On the street, nods and smiles 

make light of life’s dark Sundays.

Glad to be alive and on the go again

women talk cheerily of ailments,

their grandchildren. 

Sometimes of their husbands.

Men, not old, but unemployed,

look for motivation,

buy themselves a pie and a newspaper,

warm themselves with women’s gossip.

Tired mothers lean on buggies,

bite a surreptitious candy bar,

feed their toddlers crisps to get a minutes’ peace whilst they gaze through glass

at flighty shoes and teasing fashions,

dreaming of future days

when they might be themselves again.

At 5pm a lull. A hiatus.

An extinguishing of windows, 

a pulling down of blinds.

Doors locking on another day of retail.

The final ring of tills and card machines.

The reconciliation.

Shopkeepers take change to buy a pizza,

Pity the 8-Till-Late but wonder,

with a curling of the gut,

if they too should open longer.

There falls a calm.

The stage is ready to reset.

Along the night streets

newly broken voices bark obscenities.

In shrill counterpoint reeling girls

harpoon young men with cruel wit

dragging them to shore

thrashing, roaring, yearning to be caught

and held for a few moments

of fumbled bliss.

The pack moves on,

away from the municipal attempt to bring        daylight

 to sanitize the dark, 

in the sure and certain hope that sin cannot survive

street lighting. 

By 3am there is an emptiness,

thin mists congeal, the town brings back its ghosts.

Fishwives with baskets on their backs

walk across the low-tide mud 

to sell the hard-won herrings.

The coalman’s horse stands patient in the shafts,

while at the Tolbooth a stagecoach stops

to let down wey-faced passengers,

sickened by the jolts.

A piper from a later age skirls silently

for weddings and for death.

Under harsh security light the Visitors drift on 

undisturbed by oyster shells that fool 

the scavenging gulls,

turning into polystyrene boxes as they swoop.

Their curdled cries, like wounded cats 

or babes,

wake the men who stagger from their sleep

to drive the wooly-footed monsters through the streets. 

Slaloming round cars they wash away the primitive,

returning the street to quiet sobriety

before its present folk drift in again, 

imprinting their own lives onto its canvas.

Chemistry Experiment.

It’s been a beautiful summer. Mostly. Lots of sunshine, not too hot up this end of the country. Walks on the beach, cafe-sitting, pizza and white wine. Watching little dinghies sporting with the waves, children licking ice-creams.

There was always the underlying unease. Something not quite right. Occasional bouts of faintness, rather too strong for comfort.

Finally, last weekend, after three almost-black-outs in a row, the inevitable trip to A&E  and much monitoring.  So now I have a diagnosis: Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation. Somehow that impressive title does make it less frightening and although the moments of unease haven’t gone away entirely at least they aren’t made worse by mounting panic. Warfarin (have to jiggle with the quantities) to avoid the danger of a clot, and if the fibrillation gets too troublesome there’s something called Veloceraptor (maybe not, but that’s as near as I can get) to help settle it. 

I like to be able to forget about my body as often as possible. It gives me aches and pains and asthma and I’m used to all that, but this is rather new and doesn’t please me at all. 

Jolly Super

I love Jilly Cooper. I suppose I mean I love her books since I have never met her and she obviously inhabits a very different social stratum to me, but from her novels I feel I have a shrewd idea of what she is like as a person. My favourite has always been ‘Score’ as it combines the usual cast of characters set against a musical backdrop with a nicely plotted murder. Yesterday and this morning I galloped through three of her much earlier novels about young women, Harriet, Imogen, and Octavia. The upper class names say it all. They provided utterly enjoyable light reading, formulaic (the formula being very much her own) but having some real insights into human nature.

Two of the heroines are forerunners for many of her subsequent heroines, overweight (or think they are) with frizzy hair (hair like Jilly Cooper’s own in fact) and unfashionably flushed faces. They are forced to watch whilst the man they long for is swept away by events and other women, then, because of their misery, they lose weight, go pale, turn into swans, whilst their red-eyed suffering and  their beautiful, naive, innocent and kindly natures win Mr. Right.  Yes, it’s schmaltzy, and possibly ridiculous, but satisfying. I’ve always loved happy-ending fairy stories. The third young woman is a spoilt bitch who has always been lovely but in her determination to forget her deep unhappiness and insecurities, sets out to hunt down and seduce any and every man in her orbit, including the one engaged to her best friend. A good spanking is what she needs and a good spanking is what she gets. Predictably she falls in love with the spanker. Her humiliation does not end there; she becomes poor and is forced to work for a while at jobs she is ill equipped for. We get very little detail of her working conditions. This sordid and potentially depressing interlude doesn’t take up many pages before she is rescued from doing something dreadful in an attempt to save her brother from penury or knee-capping, (I can’t remember which.) Thus the good in her is unveiled and Mr.Right (the spanker of course) comes along to rescue her from a fate worse than death, and the tax man.

The heroines throughout her works, fictional and non-fictional, tend to follow these prototypes. They are painfully sensitive to other people’s unhappiness, have huge affection for dogs, cats, horses, and suffer if they are suffering. They fall in love with playboys, or the most irascible, rude, damaged and embittered men, becoming the catalyst for change through kindness and goodness. The inevitable culmination of their story comes in the last few pages. 

Not great literature but perhaps what is needed in a shallow world. Good triumphing over evil in a glamorous, Diorissimo-scented, non-demonic way. Some of the characters are ‘portable,’ that is they walk out of the novel and follow one home. She is an astute observer of human behaviour and is compassionate with what she sees. Her books show the understanding of a psychologist; they also have soul. From all I read about her she has been through some rough times herself and found ways to deal with those times, translating them into stories, lacing them with humour, but never belittling either life-events or people. 

Nautical shots from the shore.

The Agenda here is almost the hidden agenda. Owner Greg and grandson coming from Whitehills in Banffshire to Findhorn. It took them ten hours (takes about two by road!!)

Passing the seals on the bar. Wish I had been with them at this moment.

Getting closer, but it's a tricky approach.

Coming safely through the mouth at speed - with the incoming tide.

Rounding the buoy to their mooring. 

My favourite watering hole was very busy the next day. We had a long breakfast with the sailors. 

Even busier today - glorious sunshine and they have added pizza to their menu, wine, local  beers and, obviously, ice-cream..

There's small pontoon now but Agenda is moored elsewhere in the bay.

Sometimes when I point and shoot I get grass.