Friday, April 27, 2012
LIFE CLASS - the promo campaign starts here.
I was very pleased to be hosted today - April 27 - on Janice Horton's Author Showcase
http://janicehortonwriter.blogspot.co.uk/
It was my first date on an extended and meandering blog tour to promote my new book LIFE CLASS http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007XWFURQ
Thank you, Janet
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Excerpt from TORN
It's a sunny summer's day and James Warwick has taken Jessica Avery for a day out to Oxford, where he was at university. They eventually end up on Christchurch Field........
They put down the bag and spread out the rug. They were not alone; many others had had the same idea. But Jessica felt privileged to be with someone who knew the town intimately, and for whom it meant so much. For a while they simply enjoyed the sunshine in silence. Then James asked: ‘So ... are you going away anywhere on holiday?’
Jessica had been lying down, eyes closed. At his question she sat up, laughing.
‘You sound like my hairdresser.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not this summer. Anyway, it’s a bit late now. What about you?’
‘Me neither. The finances are a bit....’ James lapsed into silence. They watched a scull slide by on the river, propelled by four powerful rowers.
‘Did you row?’ Jess asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.
‘I have rowed, but not competitively. Never played rugger or cricket either. Not here. I was always happy to watch others exert themselves.’
She leant back, supporting herself on her elbows. ‘So? What was your dream, amongst these dreaming spires?’
Another boat slid by. James watched it out of sight. ‘I always wanted to write. After I graduated ... I showed you the Sheldonian theatre, where the graduation ceremonies are held? In Broad Street, next to the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera.’
Jess nodded. Her feet and brain still ached from the long tour. If she forgot all other buildings she’d been shown today she would remember the Sheldonian. Its semi-circular perimeter was bounded by a wall topped by metal railings. At intervals, high stone pillars intersected the railings, each one surmounted by a large carved head. The Emperors’ heads, James had called them. The row of austere, curly locked and bearded faces, peered down with classical disdain at the gawping tourists.
‘I went travelling,’ he continued. ‘I’d not taken a gap year so that was how I justified it. Some of the bits of furniture around the farmhouse are from that time.’
‘The coffee table?’
‘Came from Bali. I’d kept a notebook while I was away and when I got back, I started on my magnum opus. My parents supported me while I worked on the book which I had no shadow of doubt would make my name and my fortune. Looking back I can hardly credit how confident I was. I must have inspired them with a similar confidence. But my Dad was quite a bit older than my mother. Although only in his late fifties, he suffered a completely unexpected, fatal heart attack. I knew I couldn’t sponge off Gilda any longer, it just wasn’t fair. Piers, who was employed by the Ad’ Agency straight from uni’, was always pestering me to join him. Said it was money for old rope. So I eventually took him up on it, and eighteen months after Oxford got my first job.’
‘Gilda told me you still do work for Piers, free-lance?’
‘For my sins. The gilt has gone off the gingerbread just a tad. The public are so much more savvy these days. You can’t just be humorous, you’ve got to be ironic. Then irony isn’t good enough, you’ve got to be post-modern, post-ironic. You know I’m trying to sell you something. I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. You know I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. And if your ad doesn’t go viral on the Internet, like the drumming gorilla, then you’ve failed. It can get a bit tiresome.’
‘Sounds like it. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Don’t even bother to think about it. Life’s too short to worry about how to pitch the next deodorant campaign.’
Jessica laughed. ‘Did you carry on with your serious writing?’
‘Only sporadically from then on. I met and married Serena. Then we inherited the farm. It’s only in the last couple of years I’ve seriously tried to get back into it.’
‘What type of book? Travel? Fiction?’
‘A thriller, though it’s singularly failed to thrill anyone I’ve shown it to.’ They sat in silence for a while continuing to watch the river and the other people who’d also come to bask on this sunny riverside meadow.
‘So, how did you end up a city whiz-kid, Jessica Avery?’
‘Like you I was diverted from my original intentions by a friend. I was nearing the end of my PCGE. At a party I met an old friend who’d gone straight into the city after graduating. He was making megabucks and said I could too. I had all the right attributes, apparently. I’d find it a doddle and make a mint. I went for an interview with the Investment bank and that was it. I probably made more money in those few years than I’d have made in a lifetime teaching. So, although I have the certificate, I’ve never actually earned my living teaching, hence my plan to go back to college.’
‘You’re still determined on that? Do you actually need to work?’
‘I’d rather not rely on investment income to keep me going for the rest of my natural. Anyway, I want to work. I’ve been fortunate in this life. Others are not so lucky. I want to put something back.’
‘But in the state sector? By all accounts it’s a pretty soul destroying occupation these days.’
‘But somebody’s got to do it. And with our little ones on the brink of the education treadmill we, of all people, know how desperately needed good teachers are.’ She lay back on the rug again, feeling the warmth on her cheeks and eyelids.
‘Jess? Why are you smiling?’
‘Just enjoying the sunshine. And picturing the first day of school. Just think, in a matter of weeks Sash and Rory will already be at that first important milestone? My son’s life has gone by in such a flash.’
‘True. You’d think our perception of time would be stretched rather than contracted given how much has happened to us both in those few years. Don’t you think it’s strange? Both our kids children the same age, give or take a few months? Both have lost a parent in one way or another? Isn’t there a weird kind of symmetry in that?’
Jessica kept her eyes firmly shut despite being aware that he had leant closer towards her. She didn’t answer; the apparent storybook coincidence of their lives, backgrounds, ages and education was not lost on her. She had considered it often before and found it too pat, too laughably predictable to take seriously. Never one to do what was expected of her she found James’ suitability as a future partner almost claustrophobic. But the future was a long way away.
‘Jess?’ The day was balmy. She could smell the cut grass, hear the chirruping birds, distant happy voices and the occasional, strangulated quack from a duck against the background lap of the river. A warm and tasty mouth connected with hers. Why push him away and spoil this delightful moment?
She only opened her eyes when he pulled back from the kiss. He was still leaning over her, weight on forearms, hands linked above her head. His slightly long, unruly hair hung forward, shadowing his dark face.
‘Jess? You didn’t answer?’
‘I’ve forgotten the question?’
‘It wasn’t really a question.’
‘Well then....?’
‘I commented on the symmetry of our situations? I wanted your thoughts, that is, if you have any on the subject?’
‘Symmetry on its own is not a good enough basis for a relationship.’
‘Plus mutual attraction?’
She shook her head. From an expression of soft-eyed doting, James had begun to frown.
‘There speaks someone who’s had countless relationships.’
‘I didn’t count. That doesn’t make them countless. And they weren’t relationships. They were usually just sex....’
His frown transmuted into a pantomime leer. ‘If that’s all that’s on offer I can do ‘just sex’?’
‘I know. I was there, remember? But it’s not on offer. I am trying to move on. Just because I don’t want to endlessly apologise for my past doesn’t mean I plan to endlessly replay it. And at least, when I did it, it was because I wanted to. It was never a commercial transaction.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Those overnight stays of yours, in London? You allowed yourself to be picked up? Your words. I inferred hookers?’
‘I preferred it that way.’ He sighed and rolled back onto the grass beside her, and stared up at the dappled blue through the overhang of a tree. ‘Answers a need but commits you to nothing.’
‘Exactly!’
‘But doesn’t it leave you with a bad taste?’
‘Depends what you’ve been doing.’
He flinched. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jess!’
‘It still gets to you, doesn’t it, that I enjoy sex? And that was when I was a free agent. I saw no reason to deny that side of my nature?’
‘Look,’ he said, after an apparent tussle with himself. ‘I know the arguments. When I was a lad I lived a free, sexually active life.’
‘Which even included Imogen, I understand?’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Why? Are you disputing it?’
‘Not at all. If she says we did, we probably did. I just don’t remember. Anyway, I sowed my wild oats. Then I grew up, got married. I believe in fidelity within marriage.’
‘So do I, and I wasn’t even married to Sean!’
‘And I accept, theoretically, that outside of a committed relationship, what’s sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander. I’m not the dinosaur you seem to think I am. But....’
‘But what?’
He pushed up onto an elbow and stared down at her, his expression troubled.
‘I meant it you know. I wasn’t just spinning a line when I said I’d fallen in love. That’s the problem. It’s why we’re here. Why I’m still trying to woo you.’ He stroked his fingers across her brow then down her cheek to the point of her chin. ‘I love you, Jess. That’s why I find the thought of you behaving promiscuously so fucking hard to handle!’
‘I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry it hurts you. But I had to be honest. I couldn’t allow you to continue to think I was someone other than I really am?’
‘There’s such a thing as too much honesty! You believe in hitting me round the head with it. Think I may have preferred to continue with my misapprehensions.’ There was a protracted silence before he spoke again. ‘What will you teach?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m returning to the previous topic.’
‘Oh. Children I thought.’
‘Ho ho. I meant subject ... age group?’
‘I did a math degree and was aiming for secondary level, originally. Math is important but recently I’ve been thinking, too many kids arrive at secondary school without the basic skills in reading and writing. And by then it’s almost too late. They, of course, are the ones who’ll have to duck and dive, even play truant, to avoid being found out. And they’re the ones most likely to become involved in anti-social behaviour, drugs and crime at worst, or at best, are the people whose adult lives will be blighted by fear of exposure. The able kids, the ones from supportive backgrounds, will always be fine. I want to help those who are slipping through the net. I can’t start a proper course till the new year because Rory is only doing half days at school to begin with but I’ve been thinking about special needs teaching ... something along those lines.’
‘That’s very commendable.’
‘I don’t need to be commended. I’m going to do it because I want to. Incidentally, is there a good book shop in Oxford?’
He laughed. ‘Of course. Blackwells.’
‘Good. I’ve been doing some research on the Internet. Before we go home there are a few books I want to get on dyslexia.’
James’ next comment was unconnected, or if there was a connection he didn’t reveal the chain of thought.
‘Don’t know what prompted him, but Daniel took himself off into town the other day and had his eyes tested. Apparently they’re fine.’
They put down the bag and spread out the rug. They were not alone; many others had had the same idea. But Jessica felt privileged to be with someone who knew the town intimately, and for whom it meant so much. For a while they simply enjoyed the sunshine in silence. Then James asked: ‘So ... are you going away anywhere on holiday?’
Jessica had been lying down, eyes closed. At his question she sat up, laughing.
‘You sound like my hairdresser.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not this summer. Anyway, it’s a bit late now. What about you?’
‘Me neither. The finances are a bit....’ James lapsed into silence. They watched a scull slide by on the river, propelled by four powerful rowers.
‘Did you row?’ Jess asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.
‘I have rowed, but not competitively. Never played rugger or cricket either. Not here. I was always happy to watch others exert themselves.’
She leant back, supporting herself on her elbows. ‘So? What was your dream, amongst these dreaming spires?’
Another boat slid by. James watched it out of sight. ‘I always wanted to write. After I graduated ... I showed you the Sheldonian theatre, where the graduation ceremonies are held? In Broad Street, next to the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera.’
Jess nodded. Her feet and brain still ached from the long tour. If she forgot all other buildings she’d been shown today she would remember the Sheldonian. Its semi-circular perimeter was bounded by a wall topped by metal railings. At intervals, high stone pillars intersected the railings, each one surmounted by a large carved head. The Emperors’ heads, James had called them. The row of austere, curly locked and bearded faces, peered down with classical disdain at the gawping tourists.
‘I went travelling,’ he continued. ‘I’d not taken a gap year so that was how I justified it. Some of the bits of furniture around the farmhouse are from that time.’
‘The coffee table?’
‘Came from Bali. I’d kept a notebook while I was away and when I got back, I started on my magnum opus. My parents supported me while I worked on the book which I had no shadow of doubt would make my name and my fortune. Looking back I can hardly credit how confident I was. I must have inspired them with a similar confidence. But my Dad was quite a bit older than my mother. Although only in his late fifties, he suffered a completely unexpected, fatal heart attack. I knew I couldn’t sponge off Gilda any longer, it just wasn’t fair. Piers, who was employed by the Ad’ Agency straight from uni’, was always pestering me to join him. Said it was money for old rope. So I eventually took him up on it, and eighteen months after Oxford got my first job.’
‘Gilda told me you still do work for Piers, free-lance?’
‘For my sins. The gilt has gone off the gingerbread just a tad. The public are so much more savvy these days. You can’t just be humorous, you’ve got to be ironic. Then irony isn’t good enough, you’ve got to be post-modern, post-ironic. You know I’m trying to sell you something. I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. You know I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. And if your ad doesn’t go viral on the Internet, like the drumming gorilla, then you’ve failed. It can get a bit tiresome.’
‘Sounds like it. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Don’t even bother to think about it. Life’s too short to worry about how to pitch the next deodorant campaign.’
Jessica laughed. ‘Did you carry on with your serious writing?’
‘Only sporadically from then on. I met and married Serena. Then we inherited the farm. It’s only in the last couple of years I’ve seriously tried to get back into it.’
‘What type of book? Travel? Fiction?’
‘A thriller, though it’s singularly failed to thrill anyone I’ve shown it to.’ They sat in silence for a while continuing to watch the river and the other people who’d also come to bask on this sunny riverside meadow.
‘So, how did you end up a city whiz-kid, Jessica Avery?’
‘Like you I was diverted from my original intentions by a friend. I was nearing the end of my PCGE. At a party I met an old friend who’d gone straight into the city after graduating. He was making megabucks and said I could too. I had all the right attributes, apparently. I’d find it a doddle and make a mint. I went for an interview with the Investment bank and that was it. I probably made more money in those few years than I’d have made in a lifetime teaching. So, although I have the certificate, I’ve never actually earned my living teaching, hence my plan to go back to college.’
‘You’re still determined on that? Do you actually need to work?’
‘I’d rather not rely on investment income to keep me going for the rest of my natural. Anyway, I want to work. I’ve been fortunate in this life. Others are not so lucky. I want to put something back.’
‘But in the state sector? By all accounts it’s a pretty soul destroying occupation these days.’
‘But somebody’s got to do it. And with our little ones on the brink of the education treadmill we, of all people, know how desperately needed good teachers are.’ She lay back on the rug again, feeling the warmth on her cheeks and eyelids.
‘Jess? Why are you smiling?’
‘Just enjoying the sunshine. And picturing the first day of school. Just think, in a matter of weeks Sash and Rory will already be at that first important milestone? My son’s life has gone by in such a flash.’
‘True. You’d think our perception of time would be stretched rather than contracted given how much has happened to us both in those few years. Don’t you think it’s strange? Both our kids children the same age, give or take a few months? Both have lost a parent in one way or another? Isn’t there a weird kind of symmetry in that?’
Jessica kept her eyes firmly shut despite being aware that he had leant closer towards her. She didn’t answer; the apparent storybook coincidence of their lives, backgrounds, ages and education was not lost on her. She had considered it often before and found it too pat, too laughably predictable to take seriously. Never one to do what was expected of her she found James’ suitability as a future partner almost claustrophobic. But the future was a long way away.
‘Jess?’ The day was balmy. She could smell the cut grass, hear the chirruping birds, distant happy voices and the occasional, strangulated quack from a duck against the background lap of the river. A warm and tasty mouth connected with hers. Why push him away and spoil this delightful moment?
She only opened her eyes when he pulled back from the kiss. He was still leaning over her, weight on forearms, hands linked above her head. His slightly long, unruly hair hung forward, shadowing his dark face.
‘Jess? You didn’t answer?’
‘I’ve forgotten the question?’
‘It wasn’t really a question.’
‘Well then....?’
‘I commented on the symmetry of our situations? I wanted your thoughts, that is, if you have any on the subject?’
‘Symmetry on its own is not a good enough basis for a relationship.’
‘Plus mutual attraction?’
She shook her head. From an expression of soft-eyed doting, James had begun to frown.
‘There speaks someone who’s had countless relationships.’
‘I didn’t count. That doesn’t make them countless. And they weren’t relationships. They were usually just sex....’
His frown transmuted into a pantomime leer. ‘If that’s all that’s on offer I can do ‘just sex’?’
‘I know. I was there, remember? But it’s not on offer. I am trying to move on. Just because I don’t want to endlessly apologise for my past doesn’t mean I plan to endlessly replay it. And at least, when I did it, it was because I wanted to. It was never a commercial transaction.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Those overnight stays of yours, in London? You allowed yourself to be picked up? Your words. I inferred hookers?’
‘I preferred it that way.’ He sighed and rolled back onto the grass beside her, and stared up at the dappled blue through the overhang of a tree. ‘Answers a need but commits you to nothing.’
‘Exactly!’
‘But doesn’t it leave you with a bad taste?’
‘Depends what you’ve been doing.’
He flinched. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jess!’
‘It still gets to you, doesn’t it, that I enjoy sex? And that was when I was a free agent. I saw no reason to deny that side of my nature?’
‘Look,’ he said, after an apparent tussle with himself. ‘I know the arguments. When I was a lad I lived a free, sexually active life.’
‘Which even included Imogen, I understand?’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Why? Are you disputing it?’
‘Not at all. If she says we did, we probably did. I just don’t remember. Anyway, I sowed my wild oats. Then I grew up, got married. I believe in fidelity within marriage.’
‘So do I, and I wasn’t even married to Sean!’
‘And I accept, theoretically, that outside of a committed relationship, what’s sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander. I’m not the dinosaur you seem to think I am. But....’
‘But what?’
He pushed up onto an elbow and stared down at her, his expression troubled.
‘I meant it you know. I wasn’t just spinning a line when I said I’d fallen in love. That’s the problem. It’s why we’re here. Why I’m still trying to woo you.’ He stroked his fingers across her brow then down her cheek to the point of her chin. ‘I love you, Jess. That’s why I find the thought of you behaving promiscuously so fucking hard to handle!’
‘I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry it hurts you. But I had to be honest. I couldn’t allow you to continue to think I was someone other than I really am?’
‘There’s such a thing as too much honesty! You believe in hitting me round the head with it. Think I may have preferred to continue with my misapprehensions.’ There was a protracted silence before he spoke again. ‘What will you teach?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m returning to the previous topic.’
‘Oh. Children I thought.’
‘Ho ho. I meant subject ... age group?’
‘I did a math degree and was aiming for secondary level, originally. Math is important but recently I’ve been thinking, too many kids arrive at secondary school without the basic skills in reading and writing. And by then it’s almost too late. They, of course, are the ones who’ll have to duck and dive, even play truant, to avoid being found out. And they’re the ones most likely to become involved in anti-social behaviour, drugs and crime at worst, or at best, are the people whose adult lives will be blighted by fear of exposure. The able kids, the ones from supportive backgrounds, will always be fine. I want to help those who are slipping through the net. I can’t start a proper course till the new year because Rory is only doing half days at school to begin with but I’ve been thinking about special needs teaching ... something along those lines.’
‘That’s very commendable.’
‘I don’t need to be commended. I’m going to do it because I want to. Incidentally, is there a good book shop in Oxford?’
He laughed. ‘Of course. Blackwells.’
‘Good. I’ve been doing some research on the Internet. Before we go home there are a few books I want to get on dyslexia.’
James’ next comment was unconnected, or if there was a connection he didn’t reveal the chain of thought.
‘Don’t know what prompted him, but Daniel took himself off into town the other day and had his eyes tested. Apparently they’re fine.’
Easter - Been and Gone
Another year, another Easter.
As with the traditions of Christmas, I get tremendously excited about creating a proper Easter breakfast. I know this is my OCD coming out - 'proper', in my mind, is the recreation of the family rituals for which my parents set the template.
My father was an artist and a graphic designer. He worked, as art director and then creative director, for a London advertising agency (it no longer exists) and throughout my childhood he often worked all weekend. I well remember him in our front room, the dining table in the big bay window set up as a desk, and him sitting there at the drawing board - often fairly bad-temperedly - designing Easter Egg boxes. I don't recall which chocolate manufacturer these were for, but whoever they were, they were only one of the many accounts he worked on. (He could be doing anything from Gordons Gin adverts to Stoddards carpets or Cussons soap) But I am still in awe of this skill at the paper engineering required to develop an Easter egg box.
The real eggs, which were to be boiled for our breakfast, were painted by my dad. Before cooking each vibrantly coloured egg sat in its highly polished silver egg cup, on a silver stand at the table centre, silver teaspoons - hooked into a crescent slot between each cup - radiating out like stamen. Of course, once boiled, the designs faded and the eggs were then broken and eaten - making them the ultimate in disposable art.
(One year I painted the eggs. It was probably 1963. As there were five of us in our family, I must have done something for the fifth egg, but can't now remember what or who. The other four were caricatures of the Beatles. I have a feeling I might have attempted Cilla Black as the odd one out, but I am pretty sure I didn't try to do a Brian Epstein! )
And beside each Easter breakfast place setting would be the boxed chocolate eggs, for which my dad might well have been the orinating designer.
As we grew older, if anything, breakfast grew more elaborate as we, particularly me and my sister, no longer wanted all that chocolate. Now we would each have a little gift beside each plate, and one of those fluffy yellow chicks, which are now so prevalent. Depending when Easter fell, there would always be daffodils or an arrangement of Forsythia, or whatever could be gleaned from the garden (preferably yellow).
.jpg)
.jpg)
Imagine our surprise when we trooped in for breakfast one year, to find the centre-piece of the table was a real bird's nest, complete with a broken egg shell and a chick (a fake one!). Our mother had rescued the nest after it had been left, then kept it safely for nearly a year in order to bring it out at Easter. And when my son was a toddler, several years running, she made him a large hugely elaborate ginger-bread house.
I'll never live up to those Easters. Partly because I'm sure I've romanticised the memory and in my minds eye they are far more idyllic then the reality. Perfection is unachievable.
As with the traditions of Christmas, I get tremendously excited about creating a proper Easter breakfast. I know this is my OCD coming out - 'proper', in my mind, is the recreation of the family rituals for which my parents set the template.
My father was an artist and a graphic designer. He worked, as art director and then creative director, for a London advertising agency (it no longer exists) and throughout my childhood he often worked all weekend. I well remember him in our front room, the dining table in the big bay window set up as a desk, and him sitting there at the drawing board - often fairly bad-temperedly - designing Easter Egg boxes. I don't recall which chocolate manufacturer these were for, but whoever they were, they were only one of the many accounts he worked on. (He could be doing anything from Gordons Gin adverts to Stoddards carpets or Cussons soap) But I am still in awe of this skill at the paper engineering required to develop an Easter egg box.
The real eggs, which were to be boiled for our breakfast, were painted by my dad. Before cooking each vibrantly coloured egg sat in its highly polished silver egg cup, on a silver stand at the table centre, silver teaspoons - hooked into a crescent slot between each cup - radiating out like stamen. Of course, once boiled, the designs faded and the eggs were then broken and eaten - making them the ultimate in disposable art.
(One year I painted the eggs. It was probably 1963. As there were five of us in our family, I must have done something for the fifth egg, but can't now remember what or who. The other four were caricatures of the Beatles. I have a feeling I might have attempted Cilla Black as the odd one out, but I am pretty sure I didn't try to do a Brian Epstein! )
And beside each Easter breakfast place setting would be the boxed chocolate eggs, for which my dad might well have been the orinating designer.
As we grew older, if anything, breakfast grew more elaborate as we, particularly me and my sister, no longer wanted all that chocolate. Now we would each have a little gift beside each plate, and one of those fluffy yellow chicks, which are now so prevalent. Depending when Easter fell, there would always be daffodils or an arrangement of Forsythia, or whatever could be gleaned from the garden (preferably yellow).
.jpg)
.jpg)
I'll never live up to those Easters. Partly because I'm sure I've romanticised the memory and in my minds eye they are far more idyllic then the reality. Perfection is unachievable.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Therapeutic Pruning
I've always suspected that taking time out, exercising, doing something entirely different can refresh the brain. But here's the proof.
Every year, as the weather warms and the danger of frost lessens, my husband begins to make noises about gardening. For the most part, he takes on this responsibility, but he knows I don't like him running amok with the secateurs and loppers. I am the pruner in our family. Over the lovely sunny weekend we have just enjoyed, the mentions that 'we' needed to do the cutting-back, increased.
The timing - as always - was bad. I am very busy at the moment. Currently I am in the process of preparing two books for publication. One of them needs a thorough copy-edit and a cover design etc, but the other needs even more radical attention. I am not just trying to reformat it, and to eliminate all the weird things I did while typing it onto the computer (errors which cannot be rectified automatically with Find & Replace) but I am updating the plot and also doing some drastic cutting.
The amount I need to cut is at least 40K words. So imagine my joy last week when I discovered a duplicated chapter - almost a quarter of the excess words gone in one fell swoop. And since then I've discovered another duplicated section. A second 'Whoohoo!' moment. I've not yet finished going through this tome and there's still a way to go in my 'word-cutting project', but over the weekend I arrived at a point in the plot which needs more extensive revision and updating than anything I've done so far. The trouble was, I couldn't see how to do it. I was stuck. I fiddled around the edges, I thought about it, I did some social-networking (my displacement activity of choice) but the problem didn't go away.
I agreed that I would sacrifice my writing / social-networking time to a few hours of gardening. Despite the lovely weekend it's been chilly and misty in Gloucestershire this week, but on Monday and Tuesday out I went in my gardening fleece with my trusty secateurs in hand. It was strenuous work. We have quite a few hardy fuscias, buddleias and patio and shrub roses, as well as a pergola of climbing roses. As I cut out the tangled branches, clearing the muddled centres, untangling and shortening long brambly stems, nipping out those weedy side shoots that won't come to anything, so the knotty plot problem I was wrestling with in my writing began to resolve itself. Perhaps the act of cutting out the tangled growth and cutting back and shortening each rose to a sturdy skeleton, had a similar effect on my thought processes? Who knows?
Every year, as the weather warms and the danger of frost lessens, my husband begins to make noises about gardening. For the most part, he takes on this responsibility, but he knows I don't like him running amok with the secateurs and loppers. I am the pruner in our family. Over the lovely sunny weekend we have just enjoyed, the mentions that 'we' needed to do the cutting-back, increased.
The timing - as always - was bad. I am very busy at the moment. Currently I am in the process of preparing two books for publication. One of them needs a thorough copy-edit and a cover design etc, but the other needs even more radical attention. I am not just trying to reformat it, and to eliminate all the weird things I did while typing it onto the computer (errors which cannot be rectified automatically with Find & Replace) but I am updating the plot and also doing some drastic cutting.
The amount I need to cut is at least 40K words. So imagine my joy last week when I discovered a duplicated chapter - almost a quarter of the excess words gone in one fell swoop. And since then I've discovered another duplicated section. A second 'Whoohoo!' moment. I've not yet finished going through this tome and there's still a way to go in my 'word-cutting project', but over the weekend I arrived at a point in the plot which needs more extensive revision and updating than anything I've done so far. The trouble was, I couldn't see how to do it. I was stuck. I fiddled around the edges, I thought about it, I did some social-networking (my displacement activity of choice) but the problem didn't go away.
I agreed that I would sacrifice my writing / social-networking time to a few hours of gardening. Despite the lovely weekend it's been chilly and misty in Gloucestershire this week, but on Monday and Tuesday out I went in my gardening fleece with my trusty secateurs in hand. It was strenuous work. We have quite a few hardy fuscias, buddleias and patio and shrub roses, as well as a pergola of climbing roses. As I cut out the tangled branches, clearing the muddled centres, untangling and shortening long brambly stems, nipping out those weedy side shoots that won't come to anything, so the knotty plot problem I was wrestling with in my writing began to resolve itself. Perhaps the act of cutting out the tangled growth and cutting back and shortening each rose to a sturdy skeleton, had a similar effect on my thought processes? Who knows?
Two more Great Reviews
This 5 Star Amazon review comes from Lyn:
TORN was a real page-turner and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Gilli's characters who were drawn with depth and understanding. Very well written, she didn't shirk from the brutal language at the beginning of the book which immediately sets the tone, or from the love/sex scenes. It's a realistic read with no sugar-coating which will appeal to those who want a 'grown-up' love story with a bit of grit. Looking forward to the next one.
And this one comes from Louise Graham:
I enjoyed reading TORN very much, Louise says. Gilli has written this book so beautifully. It is by no means Chick Lit, but instead a grown up romance novel that is heartfelt and sometime very passionate (but not inappropriately so!). Set in the gorgeous countryside, TORN is about one young mothers struggle to provide a safe life for her child away from danger and everyone she knows, in a strange new place. Before she realises what she is doing, she meet someone who seems so perfect yet has to be hidden from all those around her for reasons that become very clear early on. So much for the quiet and easy life she was looking for. And how many of us have turned a corner onto an unexpected path...?
Torn is certainly not predictable, but that is what makes it a real page turner with a very strong ending that I never saw coming. Lovely engaging characters that expand and grow with every page you turn, and a story that really makes you think. Highly recommended.
What can I say? Thanks guys.
TORN was a real page-turner and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Gilli's characters who were drawn with depth and understanding. Very well written, she didn't shirk from the brutal language at the beginning of the book which immediately sets the tone, or from the love/sex scenes. It's a realistic read with no sugar-coating which will appeal to those who want a 'grown-up' love story with a bit of grit. Looking forward to the next one.
And this one comes from Louise Graham:
I enjoyed reading TORN very much, Louise says. Gilli has written this book so beautifully. It is by no means Chick Lit, but instead a grown up romance novel that is heartfelt and sometime very passionate (but not inappropriately so!). Set in the gorgeous countryside, TORN is about one young mothers struggle to provide a safe life for her child away from danger and everyone she knows, in a strange new place. Before she realises what she is doing, she meet someone who seems so perfect yet has to be hidden from all those around her for reasons that become very clear early on. So much for the quiet and easy life she was looking for. And how many of us have turned a corner onto an unexpected path...?
Torn is certainly not predictable, but that is what makes it a real page turner with a very strong ending that I never saw coming. Lovely engaging characters that expand and grow with every page you turn, and a story that really makes you think. Highly recommended.
What can I say? Thanks guys.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Excerpt from TORN.
It's a sunny summer's day and James Warwick has taken Jessica Avery for a day out to Oxford, where he was at university. They eventually end up on Christchurch Field........
......They put down the bag and spread out the rug. They were not alone; many others had had the same idea. But Jessica felt privileged to be with someone who knew the town intimately, and for whom it meant so much. For a while they simply enjoyed the sunshine in silence. Then James asked: ‘So ... are you going away anywhere on holiday?’
Jessica had been lying down, eyes closed. At his question she sat up, laughing.
‘You sound like my hairdresser.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not this summer. Anyway, it’s a bit late now. What about you?’
‘Me neither. The finances are a bit....’ James lapsed into silence. They watched a scull slide by on the river, propelled by four powerful rowers.
‘Did you row?’ Jess asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.
‘I have rowed, but not competitively. Never played rugger or cricket either. Not here. I was always happy to watch others exert themselves.’
She leant back, supporting herself on her elbows. ‘So? What was your dream, amongst these dreaming spires?’
Another boat slid by. James watched it out of sight. ‘I always wanted to write. After I graduated ... I showed you the Sheldonian theatre, where the graduation ceremonies are held? In Broad Street, next to the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera.’
Jess nodded. Her feet and brain still ached from the long tour. If she forgot all other buildings she’d been shown today she would remember the Sheldonian. Its semi-circular perimeter was bounded by a wall topped by metal railings. At intervals, high stone pillars intersected the railings, each one surmounted by a large carved head. The Emperors’ heads, James had called them. The row of austere, curly locked and bearded faces, peered down with classical disdain at the gawping tourists.
‘I went travelling,’ he continued. ‘I’d not taken a gap year so that was how I justified it. Some of the bits of furniture around the farmhouse are from that time.’
‘The coffee table?’
‘Came from Bali. I’d kept a notebook while I was away and when I got back, I started on my magnum opus. My parents supported me while I worked on the book which I had no shadow of doubt would make my name and my fortune. Looking back I can hardly credit how confident I was. I must have inspired them with a similar confidence. But my Dad was quite a bit older than my mother. Although only in his late fifties, he suffered a completely unexpected, fatal heart attack. I knew I couldn’t sponge off Gilda any longer, it just wasn’t fair. Piers, who was employed by the Ad’ Agency straight from uni’, was always pestering me to join him. Said it was money for old rope. So I eventually took him up on it, and eighteen months after Oxford got my first job.’
‘Gilda told me you still do work for Piers, free-lance?’
‘For my sins. The gilt has gone off the gingerbread just a tad. The public are so much more savvy these days. You can’t just be humorous, you’ve got to be ironic. Then irony isn’t good enough, you’ve got to be post-modern, post-ironic. You know I’m trying to sell you something. I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. You know I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. And if your ad doesn’t go viral on the Internet, like the drumming gorilla, then you’ve failed. It can get a bit tiresome.’
‘Sounds like it. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Don’t even bother to think about it. Life’s too short to worry about how to pitch the next deodorant campaign.’
Jessica laughed. ‘Did you carry on with your serious writing?’
‘Only sporadically from then on. I met and married Serena. Then we inherited the farm. It’s only in the last couple of years I’ve seriously tried to get back into it.’
‘What type of book? Travel? Fiction?’
‘A thriller, though it’s singularly failed to thrill anyone I’ve shown it to.’ They sat in silence for a while continuing to watch the river and the other people who’d also come to bask on this sunny riverside meadow.
‘So, how did you end up a city whiz-kid, Jessica Avery?’
‘Like you I was diverted from my original intentions by a friend. I was nearing the end of my PCGE. At a party I met an old friend who’d gone straight into the city after graduating. He was making megabucks and said I could too. I had all the right attributes, apparently. I’d find it a doddle and make a mint. I went for an interview with the Investment bank and that was it. I probably made more money in those few years than I’d have made in a lifetime teaching. So, although I have the certificate, I’ve never actually earned my living teaching, hence my plan to go back to college.’
‘You’re still determined on that? Do you actually need to work?’
‘I’d rather not rely on investment income to keep me going for the rest of my natural. Anyway, I want to work. I’ve been fortunate in this life. Others are not so lucky. I want to put something back.’
‘But in the state sector? By all accounts it’s a pretty soul destroying occupation these days.’
‘But somebody’s got to do it. And with our little ones on the brink of the education treadmill we, of all people, know how desperately needed good teachers are.’ She lay back on the rug again, feeling the warmth on her cheeks and eyelids.
‘Jess? Why are you smiling?’
‘Just enjoying the sunshine. And picturing the first day of school. Just think, in a matter of weeks Sash and Rory will already be at that first important milestone? My son’s life has gone by in such a flash.’
‘True. You’d think our perception of time would be stretched rather than contracted, given how much has happened to us both in those few years. Don’t you think it’s strange? Both our kids children the same age, give or take a few months? Both have lost a parent in one way or another? Isn’t there a weird kind of symmetry in that?’
Jessica kept her eyes firmly shut despite being aware that he had leant closer towards her. She didn’t answer; the apparent storybook coincidence of their lives, backgrounds, ages and education was not lost on her. She had considered it often before and found it too pat, too laughably predictable to take seriously. Never one to do what was expected of her she found James’ suitability as a future partner almost claustrophobic. But the future was a long way away.
‘Jess?’ The day was balmy. She could smell the cut grass, hear the chirruping birds, distant happy voices and the occasional, strangulated quack from a duck against the background lap of the river. A warm and tasty mouth connected with hers. Why push him away and spoil this delightful moment?
She only opened her eyes when he pulled back from the kiss. He was still leaning over her, weight on forearms, hands linked above her head. His slightly long, unruly hair hung forward, shadowing his dark face.
‘Jess? You didn’t answer?’
‘I’ve forgotten the question?’
‘It wasn’t really a question.’
‘Well then....?’
‘I commented on the symmetry of our situations? I wanted your thoughts, that is, if you have any on the subject?’
‘Symmetry on its own is not a good enough basis for a relationship.’
‘Plus mutual attraction?’
She shook her head. From an expression of soft-eyed doting, James had begun to frown.
‘There speaks someone who’s had countless relationships.’
‘I didn’t count. That doesn’t make them countless. And they weren’t relationships. They were usually just sex....’
His frown transmuted into a pantomime leer. ‘If that’s all that’s on offer I can do ‘just sex’?’
‘I know. I was there, remember? But it’s not on offer. I am trying to move on. Just because I don’t want to endlessly apologise for my past doesn’t mean I plan to endlessly replay it. And at least, when I did it, it was because I wanted to. It was never a commercial transaction.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Those overnight stays of yours, in London? You allowed yourself to be picked up? Your words. I inferred hookers?’
‘I preferred it that way.’ He sighed and rolled back onto the grass beside her, and stared up at the dappled blue through the overhang of a tree. ‘Answers a need but commits you to nothing.’
‘Exactly!’
‘But doesn’t it leave you with a bad taste?’
‘Depends what you’ve been doing.’
He flinched. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jess!’
‘It still gets to you, doesn’t it, that I enjoy sex? And that was when I was a free agent. I saw no reason to deny that side of my nature?’
‘Look,’ he said, after an apparent tussle with himself. ‘I know the arguments. When I was a lad I lived a free, sexually active life.’
‘Which even included Imogen, I understand?’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Why? Are you disputing it?’
‘Not at all. If she says we did, we probably did. I just don’t remember. Anyway, I sowed my wild oats. Then I grew up, got married. I believe in fidelity within marriage.’
‘So do I, and I wasn’t even married to Sean!’
‘And I accept, theoretically, that outside of a committed relationship, what’s sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander. I’m not the dinosaur you seem to think I am. But....’
‘But what?’
He pushed up onto an elbow and stared down at her, his expression troubled.
‘I meant it you know. I wasn’t just spinning a line when I said I’d fallen in love. That’s the problem. It’s why we’re here. Why I’m still trying to woo you.’ He stroked his fingers across her brow then down her cheek to the point of her chin. ‘I love you, Jess. That’s why I find the thought of you behaving promiscuously so fucking hard to handle!’
‘I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry it hurts you. But I had to be honest. I couldn’t allow you to continue to think I was someone other than I really am?’
‘There’s such a thing as too much honesty! You believe in hitting me round the head with it. Think I may have preferred to continue with my misapprehensions.’ There was a protracted silence before he spoke again. ‘What will you teach?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m returning to the previous topic.’
‘Oh. Children I thought.’
‘Ho ho. I meant subject ... age group?’
‘I did a math degree and was aiming for secondary level, originally. Math is important but recently I’ve been thinking, too many kids arrive at secondary school without the basic skills in reading and writing. And by then it’s almost too late. They, of course, are the ones who’ll have to duck and dive, even play truant, to avoid being found out. And they’re the ones most likely to become involved in anti-social behaviour, drugs and crime at worst, or at best, are the people whose adult lives will be blighted by fear of exposure. The able kids, the ones from supportive backgrounds, will always be fine. I want to help those who are slipping through the net. I can’t start a proper course till the new year because Rory is only doing half days at school to begin with but I’ve been thinking about special needs teaching ... something along those lines.’
‘That’s very commendable.’
‘I don’t need to be commended. I’m going to do it because I want to. Incidentally, is there a good book shop in Oxford?’
He laughed. ‘Of course. Blackwells.’
‘Good. I’ve been doing some research on the Internet. Before we go home there are a few books I want to get on dyslexia.’
James’ next comment was unconnected, or if there was a connection he didn’t reveal the chain of thought.
‘Don’t know what prompted him, but Daniel took himself off into town the other day and had his eyes tested. Apparently they’re fine.’
......They put down the bag and spread out the rug. They were not alone; many others had had the same idea. But Jessica felt privileged to be with someone who knew the town intimately, and for whom it meant so much. For a while they simply enjoyed the sunshine in silence. Then James asked: ‘So ... are you going away anywhere on holiday?’
Jessica had been lying down, eyes closed. At his question she sat up, laughing.
‘You sound like my hairdresser.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not this summer. Anyway, it’s a bit late now. What about you?’
‘Me neither. The finances are a bit....’ James lapsed into silence. They watched a scull slide by on the river, propelled by four powerful rowers.
‘Did you row?’ Jess asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.
‘I have rowed, but not competitively. Never played rugger or cricket either. Not here. I was always happy to watch others exert themselves.’
She leant back, supporting herself on her elbows. ‘So? What was your dream, amongst these dreaming spires?’
Another boat slid by. James watched it out of sight. ‘I always wanted to write. After I graduated ... I showed you the Sheldonian theatre, where the graduation ceremonies are held? In Broad Street, next to the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera.’
Jess nodded. Her feet and brain still ached from the long tour. If she forgot all other buildings she’d been shown today she would remember the Sheldonian. Its semi-circular perimeter was bounded by a wall topped by metal railings. At intervals, high stone pillars intersected the railings, each one surmounted by a large carved head. The Emperors’ heads, James had called them. The row of austere, curly locked and bearded faces, peered down with classical disdain at the gawping tourists.
‘I went travelling,’ he continued. ‘I’d not taken a gap year so that was how I justified it. Some of the bits of furniture around the farmhouse are from that time.’
‘The coffee table?’
‘Came from Bali. I’d kept a notebook while I was away and when I got back, I started on my magnum opus. My parents supported me while I worked on the book which I had no shadow of doubt would make my name and my fortune. Looking back I can hardly credit how confident I was. I must have inspired them with a similar confidence. But my Dad was quite a bit older than my mother. Although only in his late fifties, he suffered a completely unexpected, fatal heart attack. I knew I couldn’t sponge off Gilda any longer, it just wasn’t fair. Piers, who was employed by the Ad’ Agency straight from uni’, was always pestering me to join him. Said it was money for old rope. So I eventually took him up on it, and eighteen months after Oxford got my first job.’
‘Gilda told me you still do work for Piers, free-lance?’
‘For my sins. The gilt has gone off the gingerbread just a tad. The public are so much more savvy these days. You can’t just be humorous, you’ve got to be ironic. Then irony isn’t good enough, you’ve got to be post-modern, post-ironic. You know I’m trying to sell you something. I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. You know I know you know I’m trying to sell you something. And if your ad doesn’t go viral on the Internet, like the drumming gorilla, then you’ve failed. It can get a bit tiresome.’
‘Sounds like it. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Don’t even bother to think about it. Life’s too short to worry about how to pitch the next deodorant campaign.’
Jessica laughed. ‘Did you carry on with your serious writing?’
‘Only sporadically from then on. I met and married Serena. Then we inherited the farm. It’s only in the last couple of years I’ve seriously tried to get back into it.’
‘What type of book? Travel? Fiction?’
‘A thriller, though it’s singularly failed to thrill anyone I’ve shown it to.’ They sat in silence for a while continuing to watch the river and the other people who’d also come to bask on this sunny riverside meadow.
‘So, how did you end up a city whiz-kid, Jessica Avery?’
‘Like you I was diverted from my original intentions by a friend. I was nearing the end of my PCGE. At a party I met an old friend who’d gone straight into the city after graduating. He was making megabucks and said I could too. I had all the right attributes, apparently. I’d find it a doddle and make a mint. I went for an interview with the Investment bank and that was it. I probably made more money in those few years than I’d have made in a lifetime teaching. So, although I have the certificate, I’ve never actually earned my living teaching, hence my plan to go back to college.’
‘You’re still determined on that? Do you actually need to work?’
‘I’d rather not rely on investment income to keep me going for the rest of my natural. Anyway, I want to work. I’ve been fortunate in this life. Others are not so lucky. I want to put something back.’
‘But in the state sector? By all accounts it’s a pretty soul destroying occupation these days.’
‘But somebody’s got to do it. And with our little ones on the brink of the education treadmill we, of all people, know how desperately needed good teachers are.’ She lay back on the rug again, feeling the warmth on her cheeks and eyelids.
‘Jess? Why are you smiling?’
‘Just enjoying the sunshine. And picturing the first day of school. Just think, in a matter of weeks Sash and Rory will already be at that first important milestone? My son’s life has gone by in such a flash.’
‘True. You’d think our perception of time would be stretched rather than contracted, given how much has happened to us both in those few years. Don’t you think it’s strange? Both our kids children the same age, give or take a few months? Both have lost a parent in one way or another? Isn’t there a weird kind of symmetry in that?’
Jessica kept her eyes firmly shut despite being aware that he had leant closer towards her. She didn’t answer; the apparent storybook coincidence of their lives, backgrounds, ages and education was not lost on her. She had considered it often before and found it too pat, too laughably predictable to take seriously. Never one to do what was expected of her she found James’ suitability as a future partner almost claustrophobic. But the future was a long way away.
‘Jess?’ The day was balmy. She could smell the cut grass, hear the chirruping birds, distant happy voices and the occasional, strangulated quack from a duck against the background lap of the river. A warm and tasty mouth connected with hers. Why push him away and spoil this delightful moment?
She only opened her eyes when he pulled back from the kiss. He was still leaning over her, weight on forearms, hands linked above her head. His slightly long, unruly hair hung forward, shadowing his dark face.
‘Jess? You didn’t answer?’
‘I’ve forgotten the question?’
‘It wasn’t really a question.’
‘Well then....?’
‘I commented on the symmetry of our situations? I wanted your thoughts, that is, if you have any on the subject?’
‘Symmetry on its own is not a good enough basis for a relationship.’
‘Plus mutual attraction?’
She shook her head. From an expression of soft-eyed doting, James had begun to frown.
‘There speaks someone who’s had countless relationships.’
‘I didn’t count. That doesn’t make them countless. And they weren’t relationships. They were usually just sex....’
His frown transmuted into a pantomime leer. ‘If that’s all that’s on offer I can do ‘just sex’?’
‘I know. I was there, remember? But it’s not on offer. I am trying to move on. Just because I don’t want to endlessly apologise for my past doesn’t mean I plan to endlessly replay it. And at least, when I did it, it was because I wanted to. It was never a commercial transaction.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Those overnight stays of yours, in London? You allowed yourself to be picked up? Your words. I inferred hookers?’
‘I preferred it that way.’ He sighed and rolled back onto the grass beside her, and stared up at the dappled blue through the overhang of a tree. ‘Answers a need but commits you to nothing.’
‘Exactly!’
‘But doesn’t it leave you with a bad taste?’
‘Depends what you’ve been doing.’
He flinched. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jess!’
‘It still gets to you, doesn’t it, that I enjoy sex? And that was when I was a free agent. I saw no reason to deny that side of my nature?’
‘Look,’ he said, after an apparent tussle with himself. ‘I know the arguments. When I was a lad I lived a free, sexually active life.’
‘Which even included Imogen, I understand?’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Why? Are you disputing it?’
‘Not at all. If she says we did, we probably did. I just don’t remember. Anyway, I sowed my wild oats. Then I grew up, got married. I believe in fidelity within marriage.’
‘So do I, and I wasn’t even married to Sean!’
‘And I accept, theoretically, that outside of a committed relationship, what’s sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander. I’m not the dinosaur you seem to think I am. But....’
‘But what?’
He pushed up onto an elbow and stared down at her, his expression troubled.
‘I meant it you know. I wasn’t just spinning a line when I said I’d fallen in love. That’s the problem. It’s why we’re here. Why I’m still trying to woo you.’ He stroked his fingers across her brow then down her cheek to the point of her chin. ‘I love you, Jess. That’s why I find the thought of you behaving promiscuously so fucking hard to handle!’
‘I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry it hurts you. But I had to be honest. I couldn’t allow you to continue to think I was someone other than I really am?’
‘There’s such a thing as too much honesty! You believe in hitting me round the head with it. Think I may have preferred to continue with my misapprehensions.’ There was a protracted silence before he spoke again. ‘What will you teach?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m returning to the previous topic.’
‘Oh. Children I thought.’
‘Ho ho. I meant subject ... age group?’
‘I did a math degree and was aiming for secondary level, originally. Math is important but recently I’ve been thinking, too many kids arrive at secondary school without the basic skills in reading and writing. And by then it’s almost too late. They, of course, are the ones who’ll have to duck and dive, even play truant, to avoid being found out. And they’re the ones most likely to become involved in anti-social behaviour, drugs and crime at worst, or at best, are the people whose adult lives will be blighted by fear of exposure. The able kids, the ones from supportive backgrounds, will always be fine. I want to help those who are slipping through the net. I can’t start a proper course till the new year because Rory is only doing half days at school to begin with but I’ve been thinking about special needs teaching ... something along those lines.’
‘That’s very commendable.’
‘I don’t need to be commended. I’m going to do it because I want to. Incidentally, is there a good book shop in Oxford?’
He laughed. ‘Of course. Blackwells.’
‘Good. I’ve been doing some research on the Internet. Before we go home there are a few books I want to get on dyslexia.’
James’ next comment was unconnected, or if there was a connection he didn’t reveal the chain of thought.
‘Don’t know what prompted him, but Daniel took himself off into town the other day and had his eyes tested. Apparently they’re fine.’
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Should we start building an Ark?
20 odd years ago, when we first moved to our cottage in Gloucestershire, there was a spring in the garden. We are on the side of a hill. Our neighbours' house is a good five feet higher than ours and there is a retaining side wall (behind our house) on the boundary of the two properties. The spring emerged from under this wall, near our back door, and fed into an old culvert which eventually led to the pond at the bottom of the garden. After a few years the spring dried up, but then later re-emerged from higher up and further along the wall, closer to the road. My husband devised a 'Heath Robinson' device to carry the water into the culvert.
When we had a utility room built on that side of the house, we did away with my husband's contraption and instead had gulleys sunk into the path to catch this and any other water that decided to make its way through or under the wall. It was only ever a rapid trickle but it was just a few feet from the house. We obviously didn't want a permanent puddle or damp developing in the wall of the house. But then, annoyingly, after making these contingency plans, the spring seemed to dry up again.
After a year or so, water began to emerge through the surface, on the far side of the road outside. When investigations were carried out it was revealed that the spring had been piped under the road, but the old clay pipes had become broken and blocked; this is what had caused the water to force its way to the surface and our spring to stop flowing. So modern pipe-work was reinstated beneath the road and - long story short - we got our spring back.
On Friday afternoon water suddenly began POURING through the wall again. When I say pour, I mean gallons of the stuff, every few seconds! Fortunately the gulleys we'd installed were just about up to the task, but the water was flowing so rapidly and in such quantity, that the pond couldn't cope and the flower bed below it was turned into a bog garden.
Where was it all coming from? How were we to deal with it? Would it eventually bring the retaining wall down? If there was that much water coming through, what on earth was going on underground next door? And from past experience, springs can alter course. Where might it emerge next? Or as well?
We were flummoxed and began to blame a recent delivery lorry, which we think struck the exterior wall. We thought it might have dislodged something within the wall which had somehow re-opened the unused channel, releasing dammed up water. We hoped against hope it would settle down.
On Saturday morning, despite our prayers, water was still pouring through, undiminished. Where on earth was all this water coming from? At a time when water tables are dropping and the flow in rivers reducing and springs drying up, it defied logic that this was a natural event.
For the umpteenth time my husband went round to the neighbours to discuss the situation. He was gone a long time. When he returned he was smiling. Out on the road above us, he'd seen water erupting from the tarmac. We began to see the light. Had a water main burst? The men from the water company didn't arrive until late afternoon, but.... Hallelujah! They confiirmed our diagnosis. Water from a burst mains pipe had opportunistically found its way into the old water course.
Now we can expect roadworks and traffic lights and all hell breaking loose on our narrow lane. But am I relieved! Very relieved. Phew!
PS. In fact, the Trent Water men came first thing on Sunday morning. They didn't need to put in traffic lights. And the whole thing was done and dusted by Sunday afternoon. The deluge has ceased! Hooray!
.
When we had a utility room built on that side of the house, we did away with my husband's contraption and instead had gulleys sunk into the path to catch this and any other water that decided to make its way through or under the wall. It was only ever a rapid trickle but it was just a few feet from the house. We obviously didn't want a permanent puddle or damp developing in the wall of the house. But then, annoyingly, after making these contingency plans, the spring seemed to dry up again.
After a year or so, water began to emerge through the surface, on the far side of the road outside. When investigations were carried out it was revealed that the spring had been piped under the road, but the old clay pipes had become broken and blocked; this is what had caused the water to force its way to the surface and our spring to stop flowing. So modern pipe-work was reinstated beneath the road and - long story short - we got our spring back.
On Friday afternoon water suddenly began POURING through the wall again. When I say pour, I mean gallons of the stuff, every few seconds! Fortunately the gulleys we'd installed were just about up to the task, but the water was flowing so rapidly and in such quantity, that the pond couldn't cope and the flower bed below it was turned into a bog garden.
Where was it all coming from? How were we to deal with it? Would it eventually bring the retaining wall down? If there was that much water coming through, what on earth was going on underground next door? And from past experience, springs can alter course. Where might it emerge next? Or as well?
We were flummoxed and began to blame a recent delivery lorry, which we think struck the exterior wall. We thought it might have dislodged something within the wall which had somehow re-opened the unused channel, releasing dammed up water. We hoped against hope it would settle down.
On Saturday morning, despite our prayers, water was still pouring through, undiminished. Where on earth was all this water coming from? At a time when water tables are dropping and the flow in rivers reducing and springs drying up, it defied logic that this was a natural event.
For the umpteenth time my husband went round to the neighbours to discuss the situation. He was gone a long time. When he returned he was smiling. Out on the road above us, he'd seen water erupting from the tarmac. We began to see the light. Had a water main burst? The men from the water company didn't arrive until late afternoon, but.... Hallelujah! They confiirmed our diagnosis. Water from a burst mains pipe had opportunistically found its way into the old water course.
Now we can expect roadworks and traffic lights and all hell breaking loose on our narrow lane. But am I relieved! Very relieved. Phew!
PS. In fact, the Trent Water men came first thing on Sunday morning. They didn't need to put in traffic lights. And the whole thing was done and dusted by Sunday afternoon. The deluge has ceased! Hooray!
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)