There’s always a revival of a Rodgers and Hammerstein show going on somewhere.
In a former life, I was in a few. You might have seen me, in an end of the pier show, strutting my stuff.
the end of the pier show
Love of musical theatre runs in my family. My mother took me to the Hippodrome theatre in my childhood hometown. See this page. My love affair with the stage began then. When my little sister was born, she loved music, too, and her favourite song of all was Bali Ha’i from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.
one of my favourite shows
The best musical shows feature strong stories and strong characters, as well as memorable melodies, of course. One of the worst criticisms my mother might come out with would be you can’t come out of the theatre humming the tunes.
I’ve been humming Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes all my life. So has my sister. The year I played Bloody Mary at the end of the pier show, she couldn’t be there to see it. We both regret that. There’s a line in Bloody Mary’s big song that takes us both back to her baby days when she bobbed up and down to the rhythm of the music before she’d learned to say the words properly.
When I decided to write a romantic short story, I wanted to write about people who don’t quite fit into the usual parameters of what is considered the norm. We all have our own Bali Ha’i, a magical place where everything will work out just as we’d like it. In South Pacific, that place is an island, out of bounds to the marines. In my short story Not Rodgers and Hammerstein, that place is . . . you can find out here.
May we all find our own Bali Ha’i – wherever and whatever that may be.
A new Volvo truck has recently rolled out: the Volvo FM. Oh, she’s a beauty. Oh, she’s sleek. One of the most beautiful trucks I’ve ever seen. She’s golden like ballet pumps and can turn on a dime, a euro, a ten pence piece. If you don’t believe it, watch this video.
newest Volvo truck
Before the official launch, Volvo held a competition. Two brand gleaming new FM trucks set out on mystery routes. The game was this: work out the mystery route; get yourself positioned with a camera and upload your photo. Prizes were awarded to best photos from various locations/countries en route. A trip to Gothenburg, no less, and the chance of a dream ride in one of these sexy beasts.
I knew one of these golden beauties was headed my way. I know how to read maps. I grew up in that era before Sat-Navs when you had to have some nous, some savvy about being out on the open road. You learned about things like landmarks; you watched the road, not a screen. You consigned routes to your memory. So, I was out there, looking, searching. If she showed up in my patch, I was ready to pounce.
I missed her. By the time I’d learned of the competition, she’d already passed through my neck of the woods. I’m still hanging around the truck stops with my camera, though.
Himself and I like to keep an eye on what’s happening in the vines. In an earlier post, I posted a photo of next year’s grapes under inches of snow in January, an unusual event here in Languedoc.
We’re surrounded by vineyards. This is a working village. There are twenty growers supplying the co-operative and three self-sufficient Domaines. Needless to say, ALL the produce is first rate. We know. We try them all. Every year. Without fail.
vines surround the village
It’s warming up nicely now. There’s real strength in the sun. We’ve had plenty of rain, too, so everything in the garden is growing fast. Himself and I always watch for that first glimmer of green in the vines. It hasn’t happened yet. It will soon.
waiting for the first sign of life
It happens before your eyes. One minute there’s nothing to see; the vine looks almost dead. It’s just bare wood, all gnarled and knobbly. Blink, and the thing’s spreading along the wires.
I don’t actually know what variety this particular vineyard grows. I will make it my business to find out. This is the vine we have chosen to watch carefully and report upon its progress. It’s third vine in from the end of the first row opposite the first cypress tree after the cemetery gates. Yes, really! (I do enjoy a complex narrative arc)
For wine lovers like himself and I, progress of the vines is vital information. They don’t call it vit – iculture for nothing. We may even give this vine a name. Suggestions are welcome. Please click the Twitter button at the bottom of the page to re-tweet this post.
This is Easter Monday. This is a motorway. This is a Bank Holiday. In France. Where is everybody?
Not on this road, that’s for sure. Himself was driving on the way home from his brother’s place in Poitou Charente and loving every minute of it. It’s a great feeling having the road to yourself, he says. By the time we’d travelled further south, back towards home, there was more traffic, but mostly heading north.
We played the what’s the percentage of foreign cars in France? game. Himself counts French makes as we overtake or are overtaken and I count everything else. It always goes something like this: Peugeot, Peugeot, Renault, VW, Peugeot, Renault, Citroen, VW, BMW, Peugeot, Peugeot, Mercedes, Citroen, Renault, Peugeot, Nissan. Anyway, it works out at well over 75% of cars on French roads are French made. Not a rigorous survey in a scientific way, I know, but what can’t speak can’t lie, as mother used to say.
Travelling is a joy on roads like these. France is a big country compared with the UK, so you always feel as if you have more space and this photo speaks for itself. I can’t imagine any major road back in dear old Blighty looking like this on Easter Monday.
Easter is called Paques here in France. There are similar traditions to do with eggs and Easter bunnies and cute fluffy chicks as the ones I’m used to from the UK. In village centres, traders make a special point of decorating their windows, and, of course, the chocolatiers go all out to catch your eye and entice you indoors.
hanging decorated eggs
Some villages have their carnivals at Easter. The poulain is the totem animal of the town and he will be dusted off to do a tour of the streets while children follow and throw flour at each other.
the totem animal of Pezenas
The mayor of our village asked for restraint this year. It’s not a good idea to mix flour-throwing with real eggs. You might be able to wash the sticky result from your hair and clothes easily, but cleaning the streets is another matter.
After recent heavy rain which saw the end of the Hanumi blossom, my garden is blooming with fresh delights.
grape hyacinths and miniature tulips
I like to see a mixture of spring bulbs in planters. Grape hyacinths and miniature tulips make a good contrast in this pot. I’m not a fan of scarlet red flowers; I think they can be too loud and take over the garden if you let them, but a little is okay with me. Blue flowers, on the other hand, are a must. Somehow, they knit everything together.
On the wall by the garage, the jasmine is beginning to open. Its perfume is intoxicating.
Jasmine flowers ready to burst open
Doesn’t this picture just make your nose itch for the smell of it?
In another pot, pink Ixia has already started. I’d never grown this plant before, but I wouldn’t be without it now. It flowers all the way through summer and thoroughly deserves its place in the garden.
Ixia flowers are like small gladioli
I wish you all a very Happy Easter. Himself and I and Gollum Boy are having a few days away. Back soon!
It seems you’re expected to answer this question of how do you write a novel. At some point, your followers are going to want to know. That’s lovely. That’s why I’m writing this blog: to reach people I’ll never meet in the flesh. I’m delighted to have some followers. I hope to have lots more.
the lady diarist at her desk
Other writers will be curious, too. We all have our own ways, what works best for us. There are probably as many different ways of setting about the writing of a novel as there are different kinds of books. I have a link here to tips from published writers. I read both Larry and Holly and I think their information is so valuable to new writers setting out on their journey.
I don’t beat myself up about targets. I write here about letting it happen. Sometimes, my plans take a day off and the page stays empty. Other days, an idea explodes out of nowhere and I have to drop what I was writing and scribble down this new idea for a short story. It isn’t a problem. I let it happen. Why would I want to shut out new ideas just because I’d been planning to edit chapter fifteen of something else?
So, I run with the sprint of a short story when it presents itself. Writing a novel, though, is a marathon. Planning is a must. I plan everything in great detail. I know my characters inside out and upside down. By the time I get around to writing their scenes, I’ve lived with them for weeks. I know exactly where they live and how it looks. I won’t use all that information, but it’s useful for me to visualize them when they’re walking along the streets of the village I’ve invented. I even draw maps.
my version of Montalhan sans Vents in the novel Trobairitz
Okay, so the drawing isn’t fabulous, but this is the village my Trobairitz is imagining when she tells her stories at the overnight truck stop. She knows where the vineyards are in relation to the housing developments. She knows where the river runs past the chateau on its way to the sea. She knows the narrow passages and steep steps linking levels of the circulade.
circulades are spiral shaped
In Trobairitz, the shape of the village is reflected in the stories she tells. There is a central theme, hiding under the archways, shrinking back into the alleys, revealing itself only gradually. I like that kind of a tease in books.
I plan a timeline, too, so I know how events from the three books fit into a chronological order, even if in the narrative I don’t treat them chronologically. The whole thing becomes a magnificent obsession, to borrow from Douglas.
Now, there was a story. I wonder whether its themes would stand up today? That might be an interesting exercise one day; one day when I’m not obsessed with my own creations.
Sometimes, the short story I dashed down in between writing chapters of the magnificent obsession pops back, like indigestion. Erm, over here, it says, have another look at me. I’m not finished.
And I have another look, and it isn’t finished and, would you believe it? There’s enough there for a whole new novel. I’ll make that another post.
We’re supposed to be getting ready for the car boot sale. Supposed to be sorting, clearing, feng- shuing, de-cluttering whatever you want to call it. I didn’t mean to get sidetracked. I thought I had my head in the right place. The determined place. The not susceptible to sidetracking place. The don’t get in Celia’s way mood. She’s determined.
what does a cupboard like this say about its owner?
We’ve had boxes stored in the roof space since we moved to France. That’s coming up 6 years now. They say if you haven’t used something for two years, you don’t need it. People write and sell de-cluttering books all about throwing away what you don’t need. They’re full of before and after pictures and it’s true that a simple tidying up can make a room look much more inviting. But I don’t want to be extreme. I would be ashamed of a cupboard like this one. Yes, ashamed. I wouldn’t want to let anybody see it. I hope the person who did this for his/her book made a lot of money. Because they must be lonely. I couldn’t live with a person who kept cupboards like that one.
However, there comes a time when one’s lackadaisical non-system of stock rotation of belongings is crying out for attention. So, here I was, this morning, ready to get at it. Ready for the fray. Determined.
And the track forked in so many directions I didn’t know which way to run first. Oh, the lovely things I found in those dusty boxes. Inside a box, inside a box, inside another box, I found one of the joys of one of my former lives. Sheet music.
Novello – so 1930s!
I rushed straight to YouTube with it. Found recordings of it and sang along, remembering all those times I’d sung it before. What was more, it was the ideal choice for our upcoming social evening with other choir members. We’ve had Burns night as posted here in January. There’s always a celebration on St Patrick’s Day, too, but this year, for the first time, we’re having an English night on St George’s Day. A group has got together to give us a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan. I’m not a fan of G&S, but offered to find something else. And here it is! My Dearest Dear.
Now, I know Ivor Novello was born a Davies baby in Cardiff, but aren’t his songs the absolute epitome of English musical theatre of the 1930s? And isn’t the 1930s my absolute fave era? And haven’t I got just the thing to wear, darling? Because what did I find in another box while I was supposed to be throwing things away?
detail of handpainted silk scarf
I used to paint on silk scarves and sell them at craft outlets. I kept a few for myself. So, here I am now, singing My Dearest Dear, with a 1930s Clarice Cliff-ish design silk scarf around my neck and I haven’t thrown one thing away yet.
But wait. What’s this old briefcase? Was that thing ever mine? And what’s this poor scrap?
Ah! Celia, hold on to your sense of reality, girl. Stay with me. In the here and now.
my first draft outline of my first novel – page two
Walsingham Matilda, my first novel, lovingly unpublished and reclining on a memory stick with other unpublished gems. Walsingham Matilda, the 140,000 word family saga that starts in Yorkshire and comes all the way back again, seventy five years later via Norfolk and Sydney, Australia.
Awwww! Bless! A quick scan teaches me how much the story changed from that first outline and I wonder, afresh, whether I might have been better sticking with the original plan. My stories GROW so. Oh, they grow.
And now, here’s himself coming through the door, looking for lunch.
‘What you got there?’ he says.
‘Memories,’ I tell him.
‘Am I in them?’
‘No, darling. It’s before you and me.
”What’s for lunch?’
It’s time to put the memories away. I’ll return to de-cluttering after lunch. Eventually, we will be ready to do a car boot sale, but It isn’t going to be the one this weekend.
There comes a time when only a thorough clearing out will hit the spot. Himself has a pile of Money Weekly type magazines that go back to before the banking apocalypse when you could still put your cash in a savings account and earn some interest on it. This dusty tower of old paper is spilling out from underneath a coffee table in our living room and there may well be spiders living in it.
I have books and papers, too, stuffed in old shoe boxes, cluttering drawers. There’s a box full of old musical films on Video Tape, for goodness’ sake. How did they escape the last thorough clearing out session?
Gollum Boy, remember him? Here’s a reminder: Teenage Gollum
He’s still upstairs, growing greyer. He is surrounded, in his bachelor pad at the top of the house where he has more space for his belongings than his father and I in our own bedroom, by games and toys from his pre-online gaming era. Those days when he still looked like a boy. Remember them? Those days when he spoke a language you could understand?
He doesn’t have the inclination to offer any help toward this clearing out of old stuff. Not even his own old stuff. He doesn’t see it as his responsibility to sort and clear out his own old stuff. He thinks it should all be dumped in a bin bag and thrown away. Hang on a minute, we said. Some of this stuff is worth a bit of money.
I should point out at this juncture that himself and I manage on a limited budget. Very limited. That’s why we are very careful on Red Days.
It’s why we trawl the supermarkets for special offers on joints of meat and why we don’t eat out very often. So, chucking out hundreds of pounds’ worth of Lego and other young kids’ stuff was way beyond what we could allow to happen.
Himself and I began to sort through the black bin bags Gollum Boy had deposited at the bottom of the stairs. All these Lego bricks, never put away properly, the empty boxes stuffed into other bin bags. Everything all mixed up.
Aaaaargh! I think that’s what I cried out. It might have been something stronger than that.
This pile is supposed to be a Lego City Airport with planes and terminal buildings. There should be a sea port too with ferry boats and . .
But Gollum Boy is too grown up for all this stuff now. He hasn’t got time to put it all back into its boxes so we could flog it at a car boot sale. And he has made a HUGE mistake in not offering to help.
Father and I will do it for him – Little Red Hen style. Do you know that story? Little Red Hen needs help to plant the seeds, to grow the corn, to go to the mill, to bake the bread. Nobody wants to help, but when the loaf is baked they all want to eat some. No, says Little Red Hen, I shall eat it myself. And she did!
a favourite children’s story
Gollum Boy is not invited to the car boot sale day. Father and I will put in all the effort.
We’ll sort out the airport pieces and tape up the box.
We’ll find the ferry. We’ll book our pitch at the car boot sale and eat a picnic under the trees with French bread and cheese, possibly a beer from the catering van.
I had to unfollow somebody. It’s a horrible word. I don’t think it even exists outside of social networking sites. It’s like unenjoy, or untaste. There isn’t an un for these words. You can’t un an action. No, that’s not true. You can undo. You can untie. You can unearth something. You can unlock. But, it’s a tricksy little un-thing once you start digging around it. Something can be unforgettable but you can’t unforget it. It might be undesirable but you can’t undesire it.
And unfollow? No, it isn’t in the dictionary. If you Google who first coined the word, you won’t get an answer. You’ll get advice about 5 great tools to help you monitor who’s following you etc. but it seems nobody is claiming ownership of first usage of this buzzword.
You can follow people you’re interested in on Twitter and Stumbleupon and Tumblr and Pinterest and Linkedin and all the rest of them. As a writer hoping to garner a following, a sort of fan-base, if you like, I’m happy to join discussions and place my comments and have a bit of banter from time to time. When all is said and tweeted, after all, I’m in the business of selling myself and eventually my books. I hope.
But I have unfollowed somebody who is doing just that. And the reason?
Too much tweeting. Too much of the same person showing up whenever I logged in. Too much of this in your face self-advertising is a right turn-off for me. I ain’t NEVER gonna buy that book now, lady ‘cos you’ve pissed me off.
Tell everybody, why don’t you?
But the 5 tools to help you monitor who has just dropped you from their list is shouting my name now, somewhere. So maybe now I’m known as an UNFOLLOWER. A turncoat. A traitor in the camp.
Will I have to hang my head in shame? Will I still be allowed to play?
Is it just a coincidence that since I unfollowed, I’ve had no new followers?
Could this be the beginning of a new condition? UNFOLLOWNOIA – you read it here first!
Himself is helping out the British expat network today. It’s expected. It’s what happens when you go to live in other people’s countries. Whether you thought you wanted it or not.
I’ve heard some expats say that when they were looking for a home away from the UK, they wanted to immerse themselves in their chosen foreign way of life. They didn’t want to be part of some clique, some dreadful enclave of British, gin-swigging expats, meeting for golf or bridge every Tuesday afternoon and boring the pants off each other at endless summer barbecues. Besides, they would tell you, we speak the language. We don’t need to be surrounded by Brits all the time. Why move to France, Spain, wherever, if you don’t want to live the French, Spanish, whatever way of life?
And then they need a tap fixing. Or the computer’s gone down. So they get on the telephone and they make the appointment with appropriate technician and he tells them he can come a week on Thursday. Not before. He’s the only plumber, computer fixer on the island, Senora, the only one in the village, Madame. There’s another one lives near the city but he wouldn’t be able to come until Christmas.
That’s where the expat network comes in. It makes sense to skill-share and help each other out of a hole.
the ‘sunny’ expats’ airport
Himself is on the airport run this morning. Beziers Cap d’Agde. They call it the sunny airport. Mr O’Leary brings tens of thousands of passengers from Luton, Bristol and Manchester and Stuttgart, Paris, Oslo. Flybe comes in from Southampton.
One of many of Mr O’Leary’s flights
And, of course, all the people who have family in those catchment areas go back to visit and for weddings and christenings etc. Including me and himself. Why pay 50 euro for a taxi when the expat network can step in? You can’t have the same kind of reciprocal arrangement with your native neighbours. They and their families aren’t flying in and out all the time. We see a lot of cars with British plates in the airport car park. We know they haven’t lived here long enough yet to re-register the vehicle for French plates. Their numbers continue growing and the airport car park took over another field. They had to extend the runway, too and build a new terminal to accommodate all the extra passengers. When they sort out the access road, it will be better.
Beziers – a beautiful city
Beziers is a beautiful city in this, the fastest growing region in the whole of France. Even the French want to live here, it seems. The climate is, well, Mediterranean. It’s like Provence but not as expensive. Beziers is close to the coast. Here’s one of the nearest beaches.
Safe bathing on one of our many beaches
It’s good to know you’re going to get a proper summer each year. You can plan ahead. You know you’ll be warm enough on a summer evening. But a Mediterranean climate doesn’t mean it’s hot all year round. Winters are short but can be very sharp. We burn a lot of wood from December to March.
The log delivery man tips your winter heating into the road outside your gate. That’s when the expat community comes into its own again. Many helping hands barrow away the logs and build the stock pile for a few beers and a bacon sandwich. There’s a much bigger expat community offering help and advice at http://languedoc.angloinfo.com/
