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Spring 2006

March/April
The Black Redstart male looks a little like a wagtail with a black chest and face.  The female is grey but both have a flash of red under their tails.  Their call is a distinctive tseep tseep tseep followed by tak tak tak.   They're very fond of insects and larvae so useful to have around.  They are more often seen in northern Spain but we have quite a few pairs in our neighbourhood. Our favourite bird is the Black Wheatear. It is quite rare and the only all dark wheatear in Europe with a white flash under its tail.  It has a hard scratchy call with coarse rolling sounds like schrl rl rl rl and thin shee or stee noises.  It's very tame and rather cheeky, like the robin who also comes to stay with us for the winter.  The Crested Lark is rather stately in appearance and very common in the Mediterranean.  They like to sing on our electricity lines and feed on insects and seeds.

We also have the Hoopoe with its far carrying poo poo poo call.  Looks quite spectacular in flight with its black and white wings and orange body but can often be quite difficult to see on the ground. It has an  orange crest with black and white tips.  Bee Eaters visit us in quite large flocks in the early summer.  They make a lot of noise when a flock settles in a tree or on overhead wires.  The mature bird is very colourful in blue, yellow and reddy brown.  They feed on insects on the wing.

There are various warblers including the Orphean Warbler, Pied Wagtails, Yellowhammers, Robins, Swallows and House Martins, and Kestrels and Buzzards of course.  Sometimes we're fortunate enough to see a  Bonelli’s eagle.  The adult is black and white with a five foot wingspan.  It happily feeds on all these small birds and small mammals.   Oh dear!  It is more usually seen in the larger mountain ranges nearby but comes visiting occasionally.

I'll add to this page as I see and discover more about our delightful neighbours.

May
I'm back in the office after three weeks in the UK.  David and I had a great visit.  We attended a couple of RNA meetings, one in Harrogate and one in Southport where it was good to chat with writer friends.  We spent time researching family history in Halifax and Leeds, and visited old haunts in Lancashire.  Family history is a passion of mine which maybe I’ll talk more about another time.  I wanted to watch a demonstration of sweet and chocolate making for my next book and discovered one at Oswaldtwistle Mills.  What a treat that was, stepping back into my childhood.  The town, sadly, is not what it was.  My school, Hippings Vale Methodist, has been demolished, as has the nursing home where I, and my two daughters were born.  Maybe somebody's trying to tell me something.  My father’s shoe shop is now a model shop and the wall at the back where we used to dare each other to jump from, far higher than was surely safe.  Good job Mum never found out.  What a little dare-devil I was. 

I also did a few talks in Manchester libraries which I love to do as I get to meet people who've actually read my books.  We also enjoyed a trip to the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester to see She Stoops To Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith.  A fantastic production I can heartily recommend.  Delightfully funny.  But it’s worth going for the building alone.  It’s quite beautiful with its pillars and galleries, cafes and bar, and the circular theatre built right in the middle of where the cotton barons used to conduct their business.  This was once Manchester’s heart.  It was for foreign trade only and as many as 6000 men would gather in this place when cotton was king.  I’m sure they loved to meet and gossip about the state of the industry, as well as to do their deals.  It finally closed for business in 1968 by which time the textile industry was in its death throes.  You can still see the prices relevant on that last day on the display board at the theatre.

We saw the new film Da Vinci Code at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal, another lovely building, transformed years ago from a working brewery to the thriving place it is today where you can watch live theatre, fringe, eat in the restaurant or go to the cinema.  David and I love theatre and films and never miss an opportunity to go when we’re in the UK.  I don't know what anyone else thinks but we thought the film lacked tension, though of course we all know the ending so that might account for it to a degree.  

We stayed in a quiet farm cottage in the Lakes and went out with our daughter on numerous dog walks,
as well as eating far too many meals out with friends.  Oh dear, back to the diet. . .

If you click on the picture of the bluebell wood you'll see the two dogs.

Writing
Friends often ask me how  the current book is coming along.  They are only being polite, of course, as generally they haven't seen me for a while.  A monastic hermit gets out more, so what else can you say to a person who spends 95 per cent, well 85 allowing for sleeping and eating, plugged into a computer.  How do I answer this perfectly reasonable and innocuous question?  If I said the book was all over the carpet she wouldn't understand, probably say that I didn't have a carpet, which is true.  Nobody has here in Spain.  Ceramic floors throughout, perfect for banging your head against when the book isn't working or a problem has developed.  I once had a character who'd been pregnant for 18 months!  Timing, in a novel, is so important and so often overlooked.  I had some rewriting to do with that one.

What I literally mean by being all over the carpet is that I have it in pieces on my computer, great chunks of it neatly put into files called chapters, or files with names like: Patsy asks Clara who her father was, followed by a number which is supposed to remind me where it's meant to go eventually, because all of these can only be thought of as temporary homes.  Some of the book, the first twenty or so chapters, are honed and polished if not exactly to perfection, to the point where I can do no more with them at that stage.  The rest is in rough draft and some of it will vanish with the delete button, so when a writer says she writes 4,000 words a day, ask how many she throws away.  A frightening amount in the end.  Mind you, there are times when it would be tempting to bin the lot, but one has to have faith.  For me, writing involves sitting at my desk for five, six or more hours a day exploring my innermost thoughts and feelings and pouring it out through my fingertips in the hope it will make sense at the end.  Then I do some gardening or walk over the hills to work out the next bit of the plot.  One day they'll carry me away in that little yellow van for talking to myself. 

Concentration and imagination is what writing is all about.  I have to lose myself completely within the skin of my characters, while at the same time keeping an eye on the plot and making sure I don't digress too much; that everything my people talk about is relevant and either furthers the action or delineates character.

Who was it who said writing is easy, all you have to do is stare at a sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.  I'd say there are times in a writer's life when that about sums it up.  Some days the words can flow beautifully, and that's utter bliss, but when the imagination refuses to kick into action you have to rely on technique.  (Or a large gin and tonic!)

Once the whole thing is complete then I shift things about, revise, link scenes with some transition narrative, check and put in all that research detail I didn't have time to do while I was eagerly getting down the story - my stream of consciousness stuff.  The hope is that I can get the whole thing to hang together with no loose ends and all problems resolved, having made my reader laugh and cry and keep turning the pages because she must find out what happens next before switching off the light and going to sleep.  It must have a logical, paced, satisfying ending, all before my deadline which means that although I am rushed, the book mustn't be.  Because this is such a tricky process, like juggling with a dozen balls in the air while standing blindfold balanced on one leg, it is giving me many sleepless nights.

But the friend who asked me the question about how the book was doing, doesn't want to know all of this, so I say "fine."  And she thinks, how lovely it must be to be a writer and able to simply jot down a story off the top of your head whenever the muse takes you.

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