In defence of writers

This is not the first piece I've read from Susan Hill setting out her stall as a proper writer and firmly pushing others out of her self-determined charmed circle of the real thing. The real thing being limited to William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Alice Munro and, umm, herself.
Why does she waste her breath and her callused writers finger on telling us to step aside and get out of her way, that she and a few others are the Queen Bees of writing and that drones are beneath contempt?
What, exactly, is she so worried about? She is a published writer with, let me just check, yes, she tells us, 43 books to her name. Why can't she be gracious and enjoy the fact that people are writing, they are playing with words, creating stories, shaping ideas, articulating thoughts, having fun with words, working hard with words, and most importantly getting better at using words? Surely she can't be worried that without her name attached to a piece of writing that Jo and Joanna Public might not realise (they haven't received the training) it is of worth?
Her language is so full-on, so angry, and the article is self-labelled as a rant, but I can't see what's being threatened that should cause such an outpouring of venom. It seems so contrary to sense. Does she also want to restrict reading to those who are professional readers? It seems on a par, in terms of bonkersness and pomposity. Do we have a saturation point for reading and is Hill concerned that if we fill up on Big Macs (tweets, blogs, amateur stuff) we won't have room for Chateaubriand (Susan Hill)?
Hill comes out of this like a devilish anti-children's laureate, wanting to curtail self-expression, and deny a platform to any who have not trained or worked hard at writing for fifty years (at least), and her flip attitude to disadvantage does her no favours either. For anyone who's worked in the arts as I have for over twenty years (those are MY credentials) and has seen the amazingly positive impact art can have on individuals and communities when they are encouraged to participate and use their imaginations, Hill's opinions are unpalateable nonsense.
Got that off my chest then. Get writing everyone.

My life as a brick

There are many, many advantages to working in the arts sector. Mostly, it's the pleasure of working with artists. And sometimes, just occasionally, a special piece of work will find its way into your hand, and nestle happily in the house to be stroked (the three dimensional tapestry of Mopsa), hung from a hook (a framed sketch from a performance I supported), or gawped at in admiration over many years (a seven foot wooden sculpture of a head in profile).
Yesterday I had a strange delivery, a small but heavy parcel with a note attached warning me not to drop it on my toe. In my hand was a brick, but no ordinary brick. It had been covered in handmade unique textiles, printed and stitched with words I wrote for an old friend over a year ago.
After a (continuing) lively career in theatre, Julia turned her talents to textiles and asked people she knew to contribute to her degree show by asking for stories concerning objects from the family home that were precious in some way, however mundane or inexpensive. I shared this memory:
“It’s funny how so many precious family objects are related to the kitchen, to food, to the pleasure of eating together. I have several things from my mother’s kitchen that I could never bear to throw away, and that give me a warm feeling as I use or touch them. There’s the small, thick chopping board, barely large enough to cut a grapefruit, an off-cut from some post-war packing case, scarred and shaped by use. Then there’s the Nutbrown sandwich toaster, two rounds of hinged tin with long handles and chipped red wooden grips that lock, keeping the slices of bread and filling pressed together whilst they perch over the gas ring, bubbling butter and cheesy fat. I haven’t used it since childhood but it hangs by my cooker, just in case.
"Then there‘s the ancient Kenwood mixer that my mother nagged me for years to take and use, to give her more space in her tiny kitchen. I use it for cakes, whizzing up Thai green curry paste and best of all for making sausages. I loved using the mincer as a child, watching the trails of meaty worms emerge. Now I raise pigs and make my own sausages using the mincer and sausage attachment.
"Last of all are my Mother’s recipe books; not the ones by Marguerite Patten or Florence Greenberg, although I have several of those, but her own notebooks, covered in scrawl and bulked out by clippings from the Evening Standard. I still make her Dutch Apple Cake, covered in a Demarara, cinnamon and mixed spice crust”.
The brick is covered in dyed and digitally printed linen, with folds stitched as neatly as hospital corners. There is another piece of linen stitched on as a carrying handle. Printed onto the fabric are images of Kenwood attachments and the manufacturer's numbers for each component. A metal mincer cutter is held on tight with button thread and some of my words are printed on and stitched into the material.
So, after being exhibited alongside a host of other bricks, it's made its way to me - how lovely is that?
A brick was never as much my brick as this brick.

Five finger-piglets!

Hoorah, the poet who wrote the phrase I'm most likely to use at the drop of a picnic, has been named Poet Laureate. Congratulations to the marvellous Carol Ann Duffy.
And the phrase? "Five finger-piglets" of course, the best description I've ever heard of a hand greedily hunting through a box of chocs.
As it was printed in the Guardian a year or three ago, I don't think I'm breaking any rules by repeating it here.

Chocs
by Carol Ann Duffy

Into the half-pound box of
Moonlight
my small hand crept,
There was an electrifying rustle.
There was a dark and glamorous scent.
Into my open, religious mouth
the first Marzipan Moment went.

Down in the crinkly second layer
five finger-piglets snuffled
among the Hazelnut Whirl,
the Caramel Swirl,
the Black Cherry and Almond Truffle.

Bliss.

I chomped, I gorged,
I stuffed my face,
till only the Coffee Cream
was left for the owner of the box -
tough luck, Ann Pope -
oh, and half an Orange Supreme.

Synchronicity

I seem to be travelling up to London on an almost weekly basis at the moment, usually there and back in one day, rising at 6am and falling back with a crash around 11pm. I come through the door surrounded by capering dogs and excitable kittens, head for the loo, squint at the red-eyed travel weary face in the mirror and fall on the pillows.
In the train on the way up I prepare for the day ahead, making notes, reading papers, gathering thoughts. But on the way back I'm desperate to concertina the hours of travelling into a moment, and ferret in my bag for the book of the day.
I seem to be in a world of Eastern European immigration; first with Lewycka's Two Caravans, which I warmed to (loved that Dog), and then Rose Tremain's The Road Home, which is fantastic.
As a novel moves its way into the final trimester, you don't necessarily expect new moments. Mostly you get more of the same, whether it be beauty, brutality, murder or machinations, but those last chapters of Tremain's both made me laugh out loud in the quiet carriage, and spout tears.
It may be predictable to enjoy plot quite so much, but I want a story, the revelation and development of character, pain and pleasure, hurt and happiness. I WANT the predictable AND the ridiculous, and I got both with Tremain; the old lady leaves a righteous legacy, and the Chinese asparagus pickers carry out an unexpected service.
There are many moments of recognition between the two novels, as if little windows of a shared world collide and then drift: the twinned Chinese characters; the hopes and dreams of the immigrant; the dodgy employment opportunities; the brotherhood of nations in a foreign space; the ineffectiveness of bureaucracy; the realism of old peoples' homes. Such different books, so many mutual presences.
I stroked the cover of Tremain's book after I'd finished the last sentence. I wanted to absorb her talent, share her gift. It was a feast.

Testiculated

There was a joke in the paper a while back that's had me chortling on and off for weeks: "Testiculate. Definition: to talk bollocks whilst waving your arms about." Bizarrely, it really IS a word.
But I have yet another use for it. Unless you want entire ram lambs for breeding, most folk ring the testicles in the first few days of life to make sure they don't start impregnating mothers, sisters and who knows what else prior to their going off to the butcher. But Badger Face are smaller than commercial breeds and the ubiquitous rubber ring comes in one size only (unlike condoms which I've just learned really do come in micro, large and liar). This means that there is a small risk of a testicle popping back out...and the result? Testosterone, and horns, like the chappy above. So, I suggest that he has testiculated: by virtue of sheer will power over husbandry he has maintained his machismo.

Fosbury's event

I know I've been reading a fair bit of PG Wodehouse recently, what with making sure that Claude and Eustace are suitable names for the kitkats, but doesn't "Fosbury's event" sound a bit Bertie Woosterish to you too?
Probably not if you like sport, but as I've said before, I'm really not keen. I've heard of Linford Christie and Roger Bannister, remember Flo Jo with the hideously long nails, and recognise that a rugby ball is different from a football, but I don't really care about any of it.
So, there was the last unsolved clue in the Guardian Quick crossword: _i_h/_u_p. I went through all kinds of permutations: fish pump, dish lump, with hump, pith sump, rich bump. I was really enjoying myself. And then I googled Fosbury and there was the answer. Not half as exciting as this, this or THIS.

Introducing Claude and Eustace

Well, you just try taking a decent photo of wriggly squirming pusscats!
Thank you everyone for your fabulous suggestions for names. It's been an interesting task giving a pair of almost identical kittens monikers that will do well for adult cats. The only difference I can tell at the moment is that one has blue eyes and the other green; but most moggies' blue eyes change as they get a little older, so I'm just going to have to learn to distinguish other features and personality traits.
Claude and Eustace it is then, the twin cousins of Bertie Wooster who turned up far too early in the mornings, perched on Bertie's bed and nicked his breakfast. Trouble was their magnet. Sounds about right. Blue eyes is Claude, green eyes is Eustace (front).

Inadequacy and awe from Saturday's Guardian (or I love Lucy)

After days of physical toil and rote, the brain needs a bit of a stir, but like a muscle, it doesn't take much abandonment before it starts to atrophy.
So there I am, trying to rev myself up again with help from the Review section of the Saturday Guardian, switching between feelings of inadequacy and awe.
My sense of stupidity is at its height when I come across the spread on Sharon Olds, whom "many regard as America's greatest living poet". And I've never even heard of her. Do I blame my clearly inadequate Eng Lit degree course or myself? Myself of course. Just her photograph (that's it above) and quotes are enough to tell me I should have known of her, even if the specifics of her poetry sailed beyond my ken.
Next up, Julian Barnes' warm reminiscence of Penelope Fitzgerald has me smiling in appreciation of them both; clear minded, with sure literary feet, one admires their intellect and artistry.
But then, a treat of great humour. The Guardian is having fun at Mr Spin's expense. Alastair Campbell reviews Haruki Murakami and from the title to the last phrase, the piece is pure Campbell spin, using a paean to Murakami to enhance himself and puff his own work (some of which hasn't even been finished yet). How utterly venal, how shallow, how obvious, how very, very funny. My awe levels swiftly return to normal and feelings of inadequacy are drowned by giggling.
Just a flick away in the G's Weekend mag, beams Lucy Mangan's column. She's my favourite writer in the paper (as is Lynn Barber in the Observer), guaranteed to make me laugh, and always in the right way; what a satisfying turn of phrase she has. Writing on the flailing economy, Mangan suggests that we'll all be bartering piglets for firewood as if that was some kind of backwoods, medieval activity beyond the daily grind of her readers. Lucy, I'd happily swap half a trailer load of logs for any piglet you happen to have about you any time you like; delivery not included though.

It's a matrix with its very own jargon

You may recall that I was a little nervous of asking the builders when the first slates would go on the cob barn roof.
The massive oak trusses went up so quickly, and since then a veritable crisscross of timbers with their own precise taxonomy is being added so that by the time the roof is ready for the slates to go up, the rain will have to dodge a great deal of wood before it can splash to the floor.
Across the trusses are the mighty purlins, and today three quarters of the roof is covered in vertical rafters. I worry for the ancient cob walls, but am reassured by the structural surveyor that they will happily take the weight without groaning to a heap of cobby rubble.
In the bonus February sun the builders perch like happy parrots all over the roof, hammers and tools strapped firmly into their belts.
I suspect that by the end of the week the mass of horizontal battens will start to go up, and then it's just a matter of putting the jargon in a place where my brain will retain it for further recall, and it will be slate time.
Oh, and I did ask, and the answer is within the next fortnight.

The boy's so good...

...it's enough to put you into a permanent slump. It isn't that the plot is so magnificent or that the characters are particularly original, it's that the writing is just so damn good.
Andrew O'Hagan had me on page one - truly gripped and completely relaxed in the knowledge that I was in the hands of a master for 278 pages of brilliant prose. Whether it was the "smirr of rain", "the lipstick smile" or the "windows the size of bibles" I groaned with appreciation of the originality yet appropriateness of the phrases.
There are life changing experiences for various characters. When the housekeeper finds an ancient note tucked deep under the mattress by her husband telling her "I DON'T LOVE YOU ANY MORE", I found myself startled on her behalf, not by the fact of the lovelessness but by the bitterness that must have led him to put the note there in the first place. To imagine finding such a note is to wish yourself permanent despair.
The priest tells of his school's tradition of pupils and staff wending their way to the annual picnic at Gormire Lake by any means of transport possible, and how he made his journey by elephant accompanied by cheers, and in so doing realised that imaginative impulses can be made real.
And then there are the comments leisurely chucked into the brew, that speak with painful honesty and admit to singular snobbery, such as the advertising hoardings speaking "of other people's choices" - don't they just?
Even a blogger wants to shape words in a way that creates interest, and Be Near Me is surely a prime example of the good stuff.

In awe of the tv artist

For those of us who deeply admire Stephen Poliakoff the BBC have laid out a banquet - not so much a taster menu as a complete blowout. Last week those seeking out rare television drama gems had to juggle whether to record the new adaptation of A Room With A View whilst getting a Poliakoff hit with the exquisite Joe's Palace or vice versa. If your DVD was up the spout you were quite possibly in tears. If you'd watched the reruns of the first two parts of Shooting the Past a couple of days before, I doubt you headed for the Forster.
I remember the impact Poliakoff's Shooting the Past had on its first showing in 1999 - the best evocation of how pictures tell stories that I can recount. A collection being so much more than the sum of its parts; that storytelling is one of the most important attributes of the human race; how the brain is exponentially superior in every way to a computer no matter how large the electronic database; that business schools may be money making machines for churning out mini mes but they do not develop the soul: all these concepts were set out for the viewer. When something is so near perfect, any minor irritant galls, and my ointment's flea was Emilia Fox playing the redheaded leather trousered Spig who lopes and stares to minor effect. Up against Lindsay Duncan, Timothy he can do no wrong Spall and Billie Whitelaw, she didn't stand a chance; eight years on she's still not really fit for purpose.

Next up was Joe's Palace, bringing together worlds so disparate you expect the dissonance to be greater than it is. Unlike some interpretations, I didn't believe that any of the people Joe met thought he was wise, brilliant or clever. He was a young, lonely, inexperienced soul, a quiet boy neither overly naive or worldly. He was easy to befriend, mildly exploited, but saw things as they really were. He was simply the least complicated of the people around him, a cipher with little personal baggage. Chippyness was reserved for all the remaining characters, their baggage slowly unpacked for the viewer.
Holocaust references can jar - like child abuse, its horror can be misused to create undeserved dramatic tension. In Joe's Palace the revelations of the source of the billions that had bought the 'palace' and its contents were portrayed with frightening originality. Jewish men in Berlin forced to crawl naked through the park whilst the women perched in trees chirruping like birds were extraordinary harbingers of ultimate degradation.

Last night we had Mark Kermode head to head with Poliakoff, who openly shared his absolutism; his vision, his script, his work. It's a rare artist that can command control. I could rabbit on about A Real Summer or the fact that I loved The Lost Prince and Gideon's Daughter. I don't care that all the pieces are set in luscious surroundings; there is more than enough cold reality available on every channel every day (and for some good reality stuff see The Street where you can have your Spall and eat it too). All I know is there is more brilliance to come.

Terrific!

Radio 4 is my thing. In the car. After two years in Devon the tuner is still not attached to the radio aerial on the house roof - no aerial, no signal, no usable radio inside the house. Some would have murdered a cat by now. So every car ride ends with me reluctant to get out because something is on the radio and I need my fix.
My patience in not murdering a cat can be rewarded by a choice gem, a nifty morsel, a radio gaga. This week we had Sue McGregor holding hands with Jeremy Paxman and Bettany Hughes around the library table sharing some fave reads. It's not particulary relevant that Paxo chose The Secret Agent, the point is that he described it as "terrific" more times than I could count. And then it became catching and "terrific" was thrown about the programme as if it was an alternative for "and" or "the". The show was punctuated by terrific and I found myself gulping for breath so that I could continue to drive safely without tears of laughter blurring my vision.
And then I started to gasp in wonder. You'll remember Paxo's utterly brilliant interview of Michael Howard where he repeated his question a dozen times and didn't get an answer. On the basis of the "terrific" revelations I'm now wondering whether Paxo is THE interviewer of our times or someone who gets stuck in a salient groove. He sure loves repetition.

Reading the meter

Vanity requires one to check how the few but cherished people visiting and reading actually find this blog, and the fascinating site meter has a tale of its own to tell. There are the lovely old faithfuls who keep you snugly in their sidebar (for which, much thanks) and so signpost new readers to Mopsa's offerings. But I really enjoy unearthing the info that folks have found me via some totally personal and possibly bonkers Google search.

If you google “soaking filthy feet”, as one hopeful clean soul (sole?) had, Ramblings is currently first in line. Then there was “Chagford & tango”, “the magic faraway tree” (thrice), “mariana lambing”, “Mrs Malaprop”(twice), “funday fairies daisy meadows order online”, “drop em blossom”, “chim chiminey”, “location of sloes, Warwickshire”, "abscess on gordon ramsay turkeys foot", "guinea pig runny bum", "langan family theatre royal stratford east" and “wet wellies”.
I doubt that I have provided either relief or information on any of these topics, but it's good to know that if you have concerns about pet rodent diarrhoea or how to dry your wellingtons, that an utterly useless piece of Mopsa whimsy or whingeing can distract you momentarily from your research.

But back to the old faithfuls. I hadn't dared contemplate that this blog contains "nature meets art"; The Thinker is a generous soul. The Thinker, she of various articulate and thoughtful blogs (and also blogging from Devon) has shipped a Blogging Community Involvement Award my way, which sounds highly do-gooderish until you realise it is an award for being a schmoozer. Schmooze I can do - sometimes I think that's what I'm paid for. I grew up with words like schmooze, many of them less than polite. And how many people do you know who can speak Yiddish? As a language that no-one round my way is familiar with, it could be said to encourage dissembling, but these days I have to rack my brain to remember just a handful of words. Kvetch, chutzpah, mensch, messhuganer, nebbish, schlemiel, schlong, schmutter, schnoz, shtick, tush, yenta.....what fabulously expressive words - a whole phrase and intention in each.

And now I must nominate 5 awards of my own:

1. Chip Dale, the master thonglateer
2. Yorkshire Pudding, in exchange for his mature blogger award
   
3. Kaz, the busy idler
4. Drunk Mummy - just as it says on the tin
5. Mountainear, for schmoozing from great heights and to great effect.
   

What a big lot of about

Alan Bennett encapsulated it beautifully when he described his mother referring to the vista as "a big lot of about". The phrase has entered my life and gets used often. I think of myself as articulate but (and this is not something that has developed over the years - it has always been with me) frequently struggle to wrap my tongue around the word I want. Is this premature senility, a sign that I am headed for Alzheimer's, or do some brains just have odd synaptic arrangements? Flowerpot brought this tussling with words to mind, but it is a daily dance and probably as infuriating for others as it is for me. I don't even know if many people have noticed it, and if they have, I'm not at all sure I want verification.
It has, as most things, a positive side. I conjure nicknames and phrases for people and things easily, many of them bordering on the absurd. The words sit fatly in the air for a few moments of enjoyment and then burst into temporary oblivion until the object or place or person comes back to mind complete with new tag. It's like having a compendium of word games inside my head; I never know which rules will apply at any given moment, but at least I'm the gamemaster.

The meme game

Thanks to le Chippy, followed swiftly by Jan Tregeagle, I have yet another meme (or more appropriately meme) to send on its merry way. If this carries on, I will have no secrets left.

What was I doing ten years ago?
It was a Sunday, and according to my diary the day was blank - but I was no doubt recovering from the previous day's surfeit of stunning outdoor international theatre at its very best - and all a decade before The Sultan's Elephant was a twinkle in a Parisians eye.

What was I doing one year ago?
I was working in London for the day, with a view of Tate Modern, and meeting more than 40 of the most interesting artists and arts managers in the capital. I was also celebrating my first year living in Devon.

Five snacks I enjoy (only five?)
Halloumi, fried in olive oil and served with rocket and raspberry vinegar - it's posh cheese for adults, and it squeaks!
Ready brek
Raspberries with clotted cream
Sausages - homemade, with friends and an old Kenwood
Chocolate puds - any luscious kind will do.

Five songs to which I know all the lyrics
If I were a rich man
I've farted
She was poor but she was honest
Every last word of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (feel free to wipe that memory any time you like)
I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter (or perhaps a blog)

Five things I would do if I were a millionaire
I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen... (actually no, I'd restore the old barns on the farm)
I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks (and lots of art)
I wouldn't have to work hard (in reality I would probably work harder, but on the land, using muscles and no less brain)
I'd buy my sister a house with garden in central London - make that if I were a multi-millionaire
I'd have a party!

Five bad habits
Picking my feet
Snapping and snarling
Forgetting important things, remembering the minutiae
Innate laziness
Writing other people's to do lists

Five things I like doing
Walking the dogs
Eating with friends
Dibbling my toes in the sea
Lambing successfully
Reading in the sun

Five things I would never wear again
Zigzag orange and purple psychedelic flares
Yellow crocheted dress
A suit
Red stilettos....then again
Polo necks

Five favourite toys
Binker the bear
Twister
Newspaper fish
iPod
My Canon iXus

Phew. The baton is now passed to: Eurodog, Flowerpot Days, Keir Royale, Around My Kitchen Table and And Who Cares? Feel free to pick it up, to ignore it or to pity my revelations.

Mrs Malaprop

Yesterday's visit from the chimney chaps gave me the first malapropism I've heard for a little while, but they are one of my favourite things to overhear. And It's not unknown for me to spill one from my own lips, struggling as I often do to find the right word. I have a friend who is a rich source of putting the wrong word in the right place - or should it be the right word in the wrong place? No-one ever corrects them; the words hang in the air, haloed and buoyed by the communal effort of keeping a relaxed look on the face. You wonder if you misheard, and then realise not. And then a few minutes later it is repeated and you take every care to keep those face muscles still. This unintentional word juggling is part of the joy of talking to this friend, and you wouldn't want to hurt their feelings in any way. The twinkle in the eye of the listener is one of warmth and inner pleasures, and the tales themselves so enjoyable and unlikely but true, that I think we get away with it. I hope we do.