tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831988199584277132024-03-05T13:33:51.791-08:00Sue Reid SextonSue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-83071262744971122492022-08-05T03:31:00.003-07:002022-08-05T03:36:22.237-07:00Affirmative Action: the AA for life's travels<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5TrtM_ZAaU-S2GLe4rV-hHcSFafD9TWKT8JQjb_CwwZMNcXOkFH60mmQLouRrrrWzrm9Sjj-HjI7bVTRRDipYrIf3UJjJJFs2ioIPQn13ibrJLhXNQPXgYZno1k5vLawhIiSjnELsVdywDaJCXgMSE1jugNzaCJh5jwjP5SZJXiX0EBu4KdgILgoh/s3456/20220519_113607.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="3456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5TrtM_ZAaU-S2GLe4rV-hHcSFafD9TWKT8JQjb_CwwZMNcXOkFH60mmQLouRrrrWzrm9Sjj-HjI7bVTRRDipYrIf3UJjJJFs2ioIPQn13ibrJLhXNQPXgYZno1k5vLawhIiSjnELsVdywDaJCXgMSE1jugNzaCJh5jwjP5SZJXiX0EBu4KdgILgoh/s320/20220519_113607.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>A healthy bank account, lots of woollies, a resurgence of my youth’s social anxiety, and not much writing: the end result of my lockdown. </p><p> I knitted a lot. And worked loads – as a counsellor specialising in trauma. I lived alone, my house paired with someone 75 miles away (though this turned out to be a godsend). To be fair, I finished writing an almost-finished novel then wrote a short sequel/extension, but it was like pushing a car through a swamp, mostly. A huge part of me resisted any kind of expansive thought or creative activity. </p><p>This is not unhealthy. We were in emergency mode, so physiologically we were primed for fight, flight or freeze. When our bodies talk survival and fill up with adrenalin, we don’t have the wherewithal for the subtleties of ‘The Zone’ or ‘Flow’, a state partly defined by being so engrossed in something you are unaware of your surroundings. So the 2 year hiatus in this blog seems natural and right. </p><p>As soon as regulations allowed, I saw counselling clients face-to-face in a designated room in my home. After lockdown, there were other reasons for not finding a new workspace, so my isolation continued and, in a sense, my lockdown, and my social anxiety. </p><p>Anxiety is bad for creativity and acts as an inner censor. Likewise, encountering your singular writing voice, your essence in its most naked experience and expression, is the perfect anxiety prevention strategy. Similar to coming home, there is a sense of safety in submersion in something uniquely yourself but simultaneously universal. It’s like tapping into the common all pervasive life force, yours and the rest of the world’s, and in so doing losing awareness of immediate danger. We allow ourselves more easily into deep sleep when another person sleeps with us and instinctively we are each other’s guardians. Journeys inwards, forgetful of the world outside our bodies, requires security. </p><p>So until recently, much of my anxiety was channelled into the meditative safety of knitting. This is essentially acting out someone else’s creative moment. It also satisfies the human need to sort, another healthy response to the chaos that is covid, Brexit and climate catastrophe. Knitting is fine, especially if you like watching variable colour yarns make interesting tone combinations in your fingers, as I do. Plus you get something squishy to wear or give. </p><p>But when the world is in a dangerous uproar and people find themselves writing tortured poems like <a href="https://suereidsexton.blogspot.com/2020/05/lockdown-hunger_4.html" target="_blank">THIS ONE</a>, or are being actually tortured by other humans, surviving flash fires or floods, or with bombs raining down, art feels a little more pressing than simple craft. Yes, people in war zones (and those suffering most under the current vicious UK regime) need blankets and jumpers, not to mention actual safety and homes. Political art is vital, difficult, inspiring and necessary, but so is the art that moves us every day in large and small ways: colours that dance in our gaze, shapes that send our eyes round eddies on the canvas, audible textures that appeal in ways we can’t quite grasp or form words to express, words which make pictures in our heads and sensations in our bodies. These bring various kinds of pleasure in themselves. As well as also moving us to action in all sorts of subtle ways we may not even be aware of and thereby segueing towards art as therapy and eventually potentially merging with political art, art is deeply reassuringly human.
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5tHTKCMXsTwEOH5DfV-Pnrk74rul4CJA2zbmBr70wfWITc7wd1Lqounhu-tEck9Gi6n-UQtwxZ1ckl8ieA8_aGGghpuC2LdUq4FjdLCDv6uoF1K6J-auqcBbYed9gYPLifHxdzi0tCAYta7aIDWH46oKZGgXM7KqAmtyJzrdl7CuVwOLmlph35uHa/s4624/20220729_134555.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5tHTKCMXsTwEOH5DfV-Pnrk74rul4CJA2zbmBr70wfWITc7wd1Lqounhu-tEck9Gi6n-UQtwxZ1ckl8ieA8_aGGghpuC2LdUq4FjdLCDv6uoF1K6J-auqcBbYed9gYPLifHxdzi0tCAYta7aIDWH46oKZGgXM7KqAmtyJzrdl7CuVwOLmlph35uHa/s320/20220729_134555.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>
So in a grand act of throwing the table over, I have sold my house and moved to a little cabin in a remote spot near 2 small conurbations. I remake a kind of vow here, though I’m not sure exactly what mien it will take, to re-find, feel, sense, touch and foster the connection to the unspeakable wonders between words, the visceral response to colour, light and sound, and to the vital common relatedness of all life. </p><p>Big talk. In practical terms, so far this means getting up early so I can listen to the burn at the back of the cabin, watch the thrush family pick breakfast bugs out of the grass, and glimpse the feral cats’ kittens play in the undergrowth. And going to bed early so I don’t waste my eyes with electric light and can see the blue night sky through my window. Recent research* tells us three days of no electric light returns us to our natural circadian rhythm. It feels like washing out my brain ready to notice what else is in there, or ‘out there’ and what’s happening in the world around me, and gets those beautiful cognitive cogs whirring again. </p><p> </p><p> *University of Colorado Boulder
</p>Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-85516983992631298022020-05-04T09:11:00.000-07:002020-05-04T09:11:40.778-07:00Lockdown Hunger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio2jFh45Zad3HYKuwUXRQaxa8ScXzgTKdWFqiYNpwqo4f4P4LsD9IRex8KJKYfVf3w8DC2XOjcVJ1BQqKLmtxX6w-a80EW80bpZcvN1VknJYyjXo7b2eAcDLtZKzCfFCCSRtJnEzi7J5k/s1600/20191008_105328.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio2jFh45Zad3HYKuwUXRQaxa8ScXzgTKdWFqiYNpwqo4f4P4LsD9IRex8KJKYfVf3w8DC2XOjcVJ1BQqKLmtxX6w-a80EW80bpZcvN1VknJYyjXo7b2eAcDLtZKzCfFCCSRtJnEzi7J5k/s200/20191008_105328.jpg" width="150" height="200" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>A poem from lockdown, a place where I run the gambit of all feelings humanly possible. <br />
Audio version <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-454662597/lockdown-hunger">here</a><br />
<br />
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<b>Lockdown Hunger</b><br />
<br />
Lockdown hunger:<br />
A feeling in need of another feeling<br />
but without the knowing of<br />
what either feeling is <br />
or how to get from the one to the other. <br />
<br />
I ate last night’s pizza<br />
cold, straight from the fridge. <br />
Then the biscuits, every one,<br />
peanut spread on bread with gorgonzola,<br />
dial-in dopiaza, stir-fried rice and nan,<br />
aromatic dumplings with custard and cream.<br />
Wine. Pies. <br />
But yet this hunger persists. <br />
<br />
Strange unsettling thing,<br />
it swarms around me<br />
smirr-like, discreet,<br />
shapeshifts with the moment, <br />
lures me sidelong into swamp, <br />
stumbling as through midges and warm rain<br />
towards a misty horizon,<br />
with no certainty of arrival<br />
or of knowing when I’ve arrived,<br />
and no sensing of the great stone walls<br />
rising in my path.<br />
<br />
The hunger whispers: stay.<br />
Hold still in this place.<br />
Stay hungry, <br />
love me, the hunger,<br />
learn to love the hunger,<br />
love not knowing, not seeing,<br />
just feeling, something, somewhere, <br />
without knowing where, or what.<br />
<br />
This hunger exists, perhaps not in the body,<br />
but lurks in some other sense, <br />
a haze, around me, through me, without form. <br />
A shapeless moving mass of feeling,<br />
clothed in drabness if I could see it, <br />
phlegm-like, suffocating,<br />
and I must learn to love this <br />
shifting, fuzzy damp thing that <br />
morphs and keeps the light out.<br />
<br />
Ah, the light, now distant,<br />
now close, diffuse, unclear, <br />
now a vibrant brilliant shock.<br />
These flashes give a glimpse of<br />
other things, real possible things <br />
like tasks, people, memory, paths, accomplishment,<br />
then swiftly throws a veil<br />
and all disintegrates to <br />
spectres of suggestions.<br />
<br />
Time must be traversed<br />
yet no time marks itself<br />
but ticks its static tock. <br />
The clock hands twitch,<br />
the battery tries and tries again <br />
with no strength to move them.<br />
<br />
Yet in this temporal seepage<br />
the pulse goes on,<br />
now fast, now idling,<br />
with accents of a jazz beat,<br />
pause and crash, insisting:<br />
This is no time for listening. <br />
Run from the tiger,<br />
face the tiger, or hide. <br />
I peer through the fog,<br />
instinct tells me to, <br />
then lift the pen, my weapon.<br />
It freezes in my hand<br />
and falls on scrappy paper.<br />
I replace it with a meat knife<br />
and carve the wrong letter <br />
through the notebook. <br />
<br />
The radio sends news.<br />
The tiger is large and small,<br />
its visitation long or brief.<br />
I’ll know it by its spots or stripes<br />
its hacking cough or growling tum,<br />
but not to worry. <br />
I’m not a chosen one so, <br />
with all this fluid time,<br />
can re-write Shakespeare’s works,<br />
invent a new type of clock<br />
or, on a screen, fall in love <br />
with someone I may never meet<br />
and who is perhaps not real.<br />
<br />
Maybe none of this is real<br />
except the gnawing certainty<br />
that hunger can’t be met, <br />
and that the bright clouds will move<br />
across the brilliance of the sky,<br />
throwing shadow blankets<br />
for split seconds <br />
on those of us who dare<br />
to risk their life for company. <br />
<br />
Lockdown hunger:<br />
When a person is in need of another person<br />
but there is no knowing for either of them<br />
who they miss or for what, <br />
what it is each person feels,<br />
or that such a feeling exists, <br />
and no way to get from the one to the other. <br />
<br />
Copyright (c) Sue Reid Sexton 2020<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-22589433953734019092020-02-21T04:10:00.000-08:002020-02-21T04:10:01.475-08:00Showing Off<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07xs381V4XqFCjMzj3Mb-k-nxeH1CJxc-S6vbAlgqMtbU67VH0kwtnNTcgsLmF4BTETidm9fdZhC5pWzXy5_loBpntD-mFdv9WWXvX2YviOx5KgcWbatWEVtuy9UCFSgadAyBDjWj1TA/s1600/WOTR+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07xs381V4XqFCjMzj3Mb-k-nxeH1CJxc-S6vbAlgqMtbU67VH0kwtnNTcgsLmF4BTETidm9fdZhC5pWzXy5_loBpntD-mFdv9WWXvX2YviOx5KgcWbatWEVtuy9UCFSgadAyBDjWj1TA/s200/WOTR+cover.jpg" width="128" height="200" data-original-width="1024" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
<br />
This week, I had a lovely message from a happy reader which she was kind enough to let me share. It is always good to hear from people who have read your work because otherwise writers have no way of knowing how it has been received. Thank you, reader. <br />
<br />
"Just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed reading your book 'Writing on the Road'. I finished it yesterday, sadly, as I didn't really want it to end. It was completely absorbing, and I could not put it down at times. Even though I live in the beautiful Lake District, I have fallen in love with the Western Isles. I usually stay in self catering accommodation, in Scotland, but I have now purchased a vehicle that will enable me to go camping more. So, after reading your book, it has now given me the confidence, to hit the road on my own. This will enable me to have more trips to the places I love, without having to find holiday companions all the time. I can't wait! Thank you for being an inspiration Sue." Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-82571012712709342962019-11-24T14:03:00.001-08:002020-05-11T02:54:35.604-07:00Belong<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS_I4-TgVsOvGN6mbSAz983bNzof_34LH22VXRNKhFAmezSl3tmbdwT62QNNI1dMeDyY1VWRBzEh5twqPm3RT-ZXnyBLav3wxTmmjKu1LK8Jf8SNoDrmNpvZUKNlz2E-y10jguJT0Ew0A/s1600/20191103_100517%25280%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS_I4-TgVsOvGN6mbSAz983bNzof_34LH22VXRNKhFAmezSl3tmbdwT62QNNI1dMeDyY1VWRBzEh5twqPm3RT-ZXnyBLav3wxTmmjKu1LK8Jf8SNoDrmNpvZUKNlz2E-y10jguJT0Ew0A/s320/20191103_100517%25280%2529.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a> <br />
<br />
Coast <br />
(<a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-454662597/811-0117wmahttp://">audio version here</a>)<br />
<br />
There is a place you belong. <br />
It sits beyond the houses, <br />
roads, fields, factories and fences <br />
and is miles and miles and miles long <br />
and turns back to meet itself. <br />
The laws there are immutable <br />
ancient and inescapable <br />
but generally benign, <br />
if you respect them. <br />
It is advisable to go barefoot <br />
or wear stout boots, <br />
warm clothes or none at all. <br />
Keep your ears open for the pounding <br />
slow-mo syncopation <br />
or the road-like roar <br />
or the shoosh, lazy, hush.<br />
Let your hair be ruffled, <br />
your body shoved about. <br />
Meet the locals, those in fine feathers, <br />
and don’t be alarmed <br />
when they set off the warning system. <br />
Make space for imaginings, <br />
rememberings, connectings. <br />
There is enough room for them all <br />
if you stay long enough. <br />
And when the light fades <br />
there may be no dark, <br />
only less bright <br />
and air that is more precise. <br />
You belong here. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOTx3YadWkK9BYR1YxncOu3aG57tEFkCS1J_I2KTavJiHpncGd6MqT8iPzCVVEYosCRLFTruCWMHLkGKcN79ZrDUXEQiJhWpFCtsTh4emIrPnzmz7vktfofSLyDOwhrVpLjVUIvSD1mRc/s1600/20191102_173545.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOTx3YadWkK9BYR1YxncOu3aG57tEFkCS1J_I2KTavJiHpncGd6MqT8iPzCVVEYosCRLFTruCWMHLkGKcN79ZrDUXEQiJhWpFCtsTh4emIrPnzmz7vktfofSLyDOwhrVpLjVUIvSD1mRc/s320/20191102_173545.jpg" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a><br />
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Copyright (c) 2019 Sue Reid Sexton (as per usual)Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-36236820554931459372019-11-16T04:16:00.000-08:002019-12-08T13:46:05.168-08:00Old Candles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmG0O81SVNUMJLCzg6AWrbsd8gK7R4wPNQX9QdSYgIU_nYBmIx5O2yk_uViOA0U2M9gMJb044pBpd0th_9GWx2P-kkpLcinawNHBvye_LNIxaI_SA2kxm34dHpqSHExRAf3quiZYSFzgo/s1600/candle+snuffed+out.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmG0O81SVNUMJLCzg6AWrbsd8gK7R4wPNQX9QdSYgIU_nYBmIx5O2yk_uViOA0U2M9gMJb044pBpd0th_9GWx2P-kkpLcinawNHBvye_LNIxaI_SA2kxm34dHpqSHExRAf3quiZYSFzgo/s320/candle+snuffed+out.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>A poem, hot off the press, which can be read any way you want. Not about 'old flames' but could be. Not about reclaiming the past, but could be. Might just be a sensual memory of finding lost candles when I really needed one. Might have been a metaphorical necessity, or a real one. <br />
<br />
Yours to do with as you will. <br />
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<br />
Old Candles<br />
<br />
Those candles<br />
the dirty ones<br />
the bits of them <br />
the finding of them<br />
in the backs of unused drawers, <br />
in cubby holes and lost corners<br />
my cold blunted fingers on the wood or concrete<br />
pleased by the soft oiliness<br />
or the grit imprinted on them,<br />
dust guttering <br />
as the pink match top sparks into blue, <br />
praying the wick will hold, <br />
the flame grasp it <br />
and the room be reborn <br />
from darkness into gold.<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-33947667878618140762019-08-19T14:22:00.000-07:002019-08-19T14:22:31.033-07:00Not sleepwalking<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXcZZZJMwFC7fAFnZycWrzKa-sKxXZv3dMTPcFOPj7Of3r3NL_8Skc10hbEnoPeFKd-i_upQR6iRtxybgcguuiOVjoRHNF3oSHKQSQyAN0lxy0zANJGMegQbacAYrxz38pNe1U9aQb6Zk/s1600/20190817_164347.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXcZZZJMwFC7fAFnZycWrzKa-sKxXZv3dMTPcFOPj7Of3r3NL_8Skc10hbEnoPeFKd-i_upQR6iRtxybgcguuiOVjoRHNF3oSHKQSQyAN0lxy0zANJGMegQbacAYrxz38pNe1U9aQb6Zk/s320/20190817_164347.jpg" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a> <br />
Sheltering at the back door.<br />
<br />
My last post was a bit show-offy. I made it sound like I’m living a fantastic creative life like that other On The Road guy, whatsisname … Jack Kerouac, and being a Really Serious Writer who is prolific at the drop of a proverbial diphthong. This is not the case. While there have been moments of dizzying progress, this has not been the norm, and is probably nobody’s norm, which is what makes these creative instances so enticing. I’m guessing there’s dopamine involved here too, so often a culprit (see the chapter entitled ‘Can You Fix It?’ in Writing on the Road.) These moments certainly keep a writer going, but chasing after them is like trying to catch soapy bubbles in the wind. Writing is often fun and daft, gripping and otherworldly, but also gritty, painstaking, annoying and, well, ordinary and daily-grindish. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPrYpjfEDvk84KRqaDGlQ07BgRXn4fkuO1Kt7Or-LCAmhT39XK60IjA0ADfsoZ8oFyunAxkLiTXJuz9UJ2MDSOZthpMASVTSRdEsY5QpYvmXT0YVxBN8IqY1qAVj1HQW_csEHDbR4ss4I/s1600/20190817_164220.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPrYpjfEDvk84KRqaDGlQ07BgRXn4fkuO1Kt7Or-LCAmhT39XK60IjA0ADfsoZ8oFyunAxkLiTXJuz9UJ2MDSOZthpMASVTSRdEsY5QpYvmXT0YVxBN8IqY1qAVj1HQW_csEHDbR4ss4I/s320/20190817_164220.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a><br />
The secret road I looked back on.<br />
<br />
Neither can I deny that in this wandering life there have been moments of excruciating personal pain, frustration, self-loathing, doubt and fury. I’m fairly sure this is not how people imagine life in my little van and that everybody believed my last post, didn’t you? And were you jealous? Aren’t I leading the idyllic life of a perambulatory writer? Don’t I have uninterrupted time to focus, uninterrupted vistas, uninterrupted dreamtime? Beach walks, the absence of deadlines and responsibilities, wheels to remove me from unpleasant situations/views/noise/smells/people? So how can it be awful? And, frankly, why don’t I just go home if it’s so tough? Nobody’s making me do this. There isn’t even anyone telling me to go home when I’ve had enough. Or to stop whinging. <br />
<br />
But this is partly the point. I’m not just wandering geographically or even imaginatively, though obviously I’m doing both. I’m also wandering about in my gut and connecting that gut to the natural life of the place that I’m in. And the natural world is cruel beyond belief. Life is cheap. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’re a goner. And there are no second chances. But it’s also constant. Have you noticed the way the sea is still raging at 2am. No? Raging. In the dark. I can hear it from the cliff top at night, or the layby, or the carpark, or the campsite. The wind is still roaming around the planet too, fuming one minute then just hanging around to see what we’ll do the next. Everything is being conceived, rotting or dying with no regard to night-time or the need to rest. And I am no different. I might be asleep but my lungs are still on the go, blood moving around, cells deciding what’s poison and what isn’t and directing molecules accordingly, and thoughts, images, ideas, possibilities all being put through the sifter that is my brain. I never stop either, and neither do you. I bet some of the thoughts you have are as dark and scary and not nice as mine. And alone in a campervan when I’m writing about the horrible things we humans do to each other, this can be extremely useful and productive, but also quite difficult. And like I say, there’s no-one but me to tell me to stop, or show me how, or distract me. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihOd0hWEgYSUDFBX7FRvnllH0N3Gml6kfrCwxpEIzzrlBLaNTy0cHcMnTPc3pzaukl3aT2udAsIoE7CYRWgYULZbC8UgPT6svydEuYJw53T_UET1vbeRD-89ldtAZWeH3Iq6BK3Iow1Bs/s1600/20190817_173426.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihOd0hWEgYSUDFBX7FRvnllH0N3Gml6kfrCwxpEIzzrlBLaNTy0cHcMnTPc3pzaukl3aT2udAsIoE7CYRWgYULZbC8UgPT6svydEuYJw53T_UET1vbeRD-89ldtAZWeH3Iq6BK3Iow1Bs/s320/20190817_173426.jpg" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a><br />
Restless in perpetuity.<br />
<br />
Someone asked me at the beginning of this years’ extravaganza of campervan trips (I’ve actually lost count - I may be up to eleven since April now) why I need to keep moving. People often ask me this and I rarely have the same answer twice. I guess every trip is different. Today’s answer is that I want to experience everything I see, do, think and feel, and everything I hear about or encounter directly and to the greatest degree so that I can get closest to the truth (if there is such a thing), understand it better and write about it accurately. Both inner and outer. I therefore have to minimise input and be selective. I can’t hear the voice of the modern-day slave in my story if I’m listening to Boris barbarities. Boris Johnson is not in my book. He is therefore, on these trips, an irrelevance (and arguably elsewhere too). I can’t hear the boom of the waves if I’m lost in the petty dramas of my own family life (sorry guys). But I can write the very real dramas of my imaginary characters if I can temporarily swap their anguish for a booming wave, a grand vista, or a clump of swaying grasses, and thereby calm myself enough to go back into the dark world of torment I’m creating for them (or indeed my own dark world of torment – we all have one of these, don’t we? Do we?). This is the closest I’ll ever come to living through what I’m doing to these imaginary people. Being able to move regularly from one experience to another and back again seems to allow me to go deeper into every encounter, thought, feeling or happening, or to notice when I don’t and wonder why. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisvoTB9EfH1ZT-rK6BPa1IcMecTpQ7Dg9ipog7RwjWR4_nFwuQq9PJQ4puvvJXz2abeem1FLv_ofVgPxz6v9aDFh32FQ4ZViaYECNhc0OZWITxVubQi4BWT9zaoOFUxP5u1kh95Ir5Qjo/s1600/20190815_210326.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisvoTB9EfH1ZT-rK6BPa1IcMecTpQ7Dg9ipog7RwjWR4_nFwuQq9PJQ4puvvJXz2abeem1FLv_ofVgPxz6v9aDFh32FQ4ZViaYECNhc0OZWITxVubQi4BWT9zaoOFUxP5u1kh95Ir5Qjo/s320/20190815_210326.jpg" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a><br />
Dusk falling before the storm.<br />
<br />
<br />
The natural world is the leveller, the constant, the reassurance that while everything always changes, the laws of nature don’t appear to. The seas may be rising, but they’re rising in accordance with the straightforward rules of the behaviour of chemicals, energy, temperature and life, and the interaction of all these. The perpetual nature of this is jaw-droppingly beautiful, and so is its expression, for instance the giant waves here outside the van on the beach in Kintyre as the storm gathers, the bees still bumbling with apparent ease amongst the purple knapweed, the gulls, quiet for once, hanging out peacefully together at the shoreline, the vast ever-changing sky. <br />
<br />
I do love my life at home, and I love my work as a therapeutic counsellor, but after a while I notice I’m tired, physically and emotionally, as if I’ve shrunk or at least my battery has. Then I get homesick for what I would call the ‘real’ world and feel I can’t sustain the depth of my engagement with the life around about me, or in my writing. I need the sea, and some impenetrable brambles, and a sky that hides the islands it shone brightly over five minutes ago, and I need the existential nature of all this and myself in order to avoid sleepwalking through life and to be fully present with myself and clients and writing. Here at the shore or in the mountain, where there is less human interruption, I can have that experience of being present to the fullest I am able, including those people I do meet, without shielding or filtering. This would be overwhelming in a city but is nevertheless a way of being I need to hold close and bring home with me. <br />
<br />
P.S. I do have friends, family and a social life and respond well when spoken to, so if you see my van, stop in for a cuppa. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-83293769439776687252019-08-06T06:43:00.000-07:002019-08-06T06:43:17.434-07:00Update - Upgrade - Upended world. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOLJ4yyvnRRjbIaQIcJopFHUIeILLwL3wRtUMBAY-VUkFY_3CUwK-_oF8T6sQnW3l1SWH1ZjWd_c6hUsVr0H0Ip4vSLPuq7e9pNxCBQvsye3DsgWlyCpVduoc3LTsaFUZgzRZ5fxuT0pI/s1600/20190419_122923.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOLJ4yyvnRRjbIaQIcJopFHUIeILLwL3wRtUMBAY-VUkFY_3CUwK-_oF8T6sQnW3l1SWH1ZjWd_c6hUsVr0H0Ip4vSLPuq7e9pNxCBQvsye3DsgWlyCpVduoc3LTsaFUZgzRZ5fxuT0pI/s320/20190419_122923.jpg" width="320" height="263" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1316" /></a> <br />
This little beaut is Hot Water Tracy, so named for her number plate, which I guess I’d better not tell you. HWT has not caused any hot water situations so far unless you count the trial first night in March this year when I discovered how easily duvets fall off narrow benches in the middle of very cold nights. Otherwise all is spectacularly well. <br />
<br />
For those of you who’ve read <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/writing-on-the-road-campervan-love-and-the-joy-of-solitude/sue-reid-sexton/9781849343831">Writing on the Road</a> and seen the pictures or were lucky enough to climb aboard at events or by the roadside, HWT has the same basic layout of two benches and a kitchen area as Vanessa Hotplate, my thus far most beloved campervan, another Romahome. But HWT’s interior feels more spacious because it is open to the cab. No more fumbling along the outer flanks to reach the back door. Just hop between the seats and keep the heat in. <br />
<br />
I have opted for luxury now and routinely turn the benches into a bed the width of a kingsize and the length of the width of a kingsize. Such comfort, as long as I sleep diagonally. (There is a foot extension thing stored at home for insisters on parallel lives.)<br />
<br />
And it turns out dearest Tracy is made of magic. In the four months since my first proper trip at the beginning of April, I have been on nine writing trips. This is extraordinary. To put you in the picture, the last van was simply not suitable, not an office on wheels with a convenient scullery kitchen, but a cramped space in which something always had to be moved before you could get at something else. It even had bars at eye level between windows and no toilet (gasp). Consequently, there were few trips and even less satisfying, writing-focussed ones. Add to that a temporary but extremely demanding day job and you can see why a psychological thriller full of human atrocities was not getting written. But bless my previous employers, they fired me (for all the right reasons). So I was left with lots of time on my hands, a perfect van and a novel to write. <br />
<br />
Nine trips later and I finished the first draft, then the second draft. And lo, I looked and much of it was good. There have been poems, several, often written while writing the novel. Simultaneous writing. There’s a new thing. Weird. Perhaps I have two brains after all. Some of it was good. Some not so good. Often hard to tell which was which. More on these later. Phew!<br />
<br />
But boy does this writing on the road malarkey work. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-88015074719659425472019-08-04T04:33:00.001-07:002019-08-04T04:35:06.777-07:00"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhpo54FLxyLzcCwFsxjScLoeLm2WyfRRBI7VyFPxlxNC9eXC2OSEQBSteKIadlIynQXdm7m6sle7TZ_b1zgJb9bl8bBfdW6ErTnO-5iRiYxxnCDCe4IVDn84kFmh1LN-5wWlyR2gywKmk/s1600/20190517_190409.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhpo54FLxyLzcCwFsxjScLoeLm2WyfRRBI7VyFPxlxNC9eXC2OSEQBSteKIadlIynQXdm7m6sle7TZ_b1zgJb9bl8bBfdW6ErTnO-5iRiYxxnCDCe4IVDn84kFmh1LN-5wWlyR2gywKmk/s320/20190517_190409.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
The title of this post is a quote from a poem by Muriel Rukeyser, the American Beat poet. I often start workshops or events with it and then a couple of years ago finally enshrined it in the poem below. <br />
<br />
FOOD<br />
<br />
An evening walk<br />
To shake off work and home,<br />
I strode unpeopled streets <br />
a moon huge above <br />
the hill our house sits on. <br />
It spread its silver coins for those <br />
who chose to lift them. <br />
I filled my pockets<br />
and brought home dinner.<br />
<br />
They think I’m there all day for them<br />
and want to chat. <br />
This gets no writing on the page and only <br />
feeds me greens and wine<br />
when what I need is word protein<br />
spicy flights of fancy<br />
the sugar of phrases falling <br />
in surprising ways and <br />
book borscht with feta metaphor<br />
that turns what I produce a vibrant red <br />
and frightens me <br />
then makes me laugh and <br />
feeds the world. <br />
<br />
With this nutrition I could forgive <br />
those proper Charlies who want a piece of me. <br />
<br />
Verily I say unto you: <br />
the world is made of stories <br />
not atoms. <br />
Words are the food of life<br />
and nothing else matters.<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-79565972613993970672019-07-10T10:53:00.000-07:002019-07-10T10:53:12.981-07:00gannets<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHYNll41y1riBUxudeemzfyuO3mDvflBhQf9TbcNsBKmmIpEhDkW8Dn6MpoOxaV9ng5F7QKw1XwaPpFQ81YmeS9UK-tJ3pOc55-_FbX-uvlSrVpLXDf60ajDfDKCKX48SW_lsZRgJBLhQ/s1600/20190621_211217.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHYNll41y1riBUxudeemzfyuO3mDvflBhQf9TbcNsBKmmIpEhDkW8Dn6MpoOxaV9ng5F7QKw1XwaPpFQ81YmeS9UK-tJ3pOc55-_FbX-uvlSrVpLXDf60ajDfDKCKX48SW_lsZRgJBLhQ/s400/20190621_211217.jpg" width="300" height="400" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>This is where I have often watched gannets spiral upwards then drop themselves from great heights into the sea where unsuspecting dinner awaits. Their bright whiteness catches the light so they are easy to spot and often do their diving close enough to the shore to be viewed with the naked eye. The poem below is named after the layby in which I spent the afternoon and evening watching them. As the light dimmed, a weird ruffling of the sea caught my eye, so I lifted the binoculars and was rewarded by catching a mass of them congregating at considerable distance. With only a basic phone camera and an old digital Cannon, there was no possibility of saving them for posterity, except in my mind's eye. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Tangy T-Shaped Layby <br />
20/6/19 <br />
<br />
four gannets passing plus a follower<br />
four more gannets and a straggler<br />
second posse disintegrates, dissolves<br />
another four gannets, no follower<br />
<br />
my disparate family, plus Gran<br />
my dishevelled family, each flying their own path<br />
maw, paw, the weans<br />
and Gran<br />
<br />
six gannets and a straggler<br />
break into three, two, one and one<br />
<br />
two gannets together <br />
one soars, one skims<br />
<br />
speedy little brown duck<br />
cuts through the jutting rocks<br />
<br />
two more gannets and a follower<br />
catches up to make three<br />
<br />
eight gannets in a swirling cloud<br />
party in the rain and wind<br />
above a tempestuous sea<br />
riding the airwaves<br />
<br />
nine equidistant gannets<br />
split into fours<br />
one straggler<br />
between them<br />
undecided<br />
<br />
lone gannet rises<br />
falls with grace<br />
to the surface<br />
rises again<br />
<br />
lone gannet fights for height<br />
swoops like a peregrine<br />
curves off the shallows<br />
fights up again<br />
<br />
no diving<br />
<br />
twilight, binoculars, hundred<br />
distant silent hullaballoo<br />
youngsters party in the fading light<br />
on a choppy sea<br />
adults encircling<br />
<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-64782970659176239682019-04-22T03:00:00.000-07:002019-04-22T03:00:50.774-07:00CostToday is World Earth Day. Here is a short story, written before the existence of Extinction Rebellion, to illustrate the price some people pay for their dedication to our world. It comes with a message to look after yourself. Being open to the enormity of the problem and the task is difficult emotional work. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9ggeeoTTlCwK2d1ljD3v0CmNIfdAeafvP-gvuZ5xlGTHTvWQ47jDb-ywlcSyNU7DBYK5hFEnv_0NvENVQ8UPvZjOpZSN4loRnuwdHKGPUmD3tUZGtSZedm6xZYV2KFSjA3ZxwGQ8HgdA/s1600/extinctionr_2000.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9ggeeoTTlCwK2d1ljD3v0CmNIfdAeafvP-gvuZ5xlGTHTvWQ47jDb-ywlcSyNU7DBYK5hFEnv_0NvENVQ8UPvZjOpZSN4loRnuwdHKGPUmD3tUZGtSZedm6xZYV2KFSjA3ZxwGQ8HgdA/s200/extinctionr_2000.png" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="525" data-original-height="525" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Ria wiped the wrapper of her carefully prepared sandwiches with a damp cloth she kept in a freezer bag for the purpose. She opened the sandwich pack, then crammed bread, cheese and pickles into her mouth so quickly I thought she might choke. I should have known better. She was entirely in control of what she was doing. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, I tried to disentangle a hair clip buried on the side of my hair. She tossed her dark curls back over her white waterproof shoulder with a shrug. ‘Gimme,’ she said, and gestured at the plastic cup which dangled off the back of my rucksack displaying its coffee-stained interior. I undid it and ran a doc leaf round the inside of it. If docs neutralise nettle stings, they’re ok in your soup, right?<br />
<br />
Ria unscrewed her own cup from the flask and set it gingerly on her knee then poured hot soup into mine first and hers second. I cracked open the chocolate biscuits and ate one while I waited for the soup to cool. The red tear-here strip unstuck itself from the packet and floated off down the hill we had just climbed. I watched with interest as it travelled a series of updrafts, downdrafts and this-way-and-that-drafts. Ria thrust her cup into my free hand and raced off after it. I stayed put and laughed as she chased this tiny meaningless thing through the long grass and thistles.<br />
<br />
Her perfect almond-shaped face was pink with effort when she finally captured and tamed the red ribbon and thrust it, quivering in her palm, under my nose.<br />
<br />
‘Got the little bastard,’ she said with exaggerated triumph.<br />
<br />
‘Ria saves the world,’ I laughed.<br />
<br />
‘A bird might think it’s a worm,’ she said in staccato. Her fingers snapped around it and she turned from me and fiddled with her bag. ‘It’s like a streak of blood,’ she said, holding the tiny red thing against the blue sky.<br />
<br />
On the train home, while working my way through the remaining biscuits, I gazed at our bags on the luggage rack. We bought them at the same time, identical in light green and grey, except that I had covered mine with badges from Oban, the Pyrenees, Cumbria Council , and other exotic locations. Along with the usual scrapes from hillsides and bogs, there were beetroot stains from a salad that burst its Tupperware, blood where I caught my leg on barbed wire, and paint when I did up my room without removing valuables first. Hers looked like it had never been used. It was overfull for a day trip.<br />
<br />
‘I’ve been picking up any rubbish I saw,’ she said, and flushed again. ‘I didn’t want to spoil your day. That’s why I let you lead, so you wouldn’t see me.’ She opened her bag to reveal an orange placky bag within it full of chocolate wrappers, tie-wraps, at least one sock, an industrial glove, and several crisp packets, and that was just the surface. ‘The glove is for picking,’ she said. ‘It’s amazing how much rubbish is out there once you start looking.’<br />
<br />
‘Why would that spoil my day?’ I asked. ‘That’s a great thing to do.’ I believed it was. Ria really was saving the world. What could be better than cleaning up the wilderness while you wend your merry way through it enjoying its great splendour? And what extra effort would it take to just reach down every so often and pull some piece of weather scrubbed junk out of a bush?<br />
<br />
The following weekend I learnt the truth.<br />
<br />
As always, we set off in the semi dark and boarded a train. Dozing against the window I dreamt of blizzards of snowstorms of metallic crisp packets glinting in the autumn sun. When Ria nudged me awake, we were in a remote station with no houses, not even a ticket office. We swung our packs onto our backs and looked out at the sun-bathed landscape. There was not a scrap of rubbish to be seen.<br />
<br />
‘Hurrah for the day!’ she laughed.<br />
<br />
‘And the clean fresh air!’ I said. ‘No rubbish here.’<br />
<br />
She made no reply.<br />
<br />
We took photos of the view with our phones. Following a lonely windswept cloud, Ria made a long narrow panorama and I did the same but with the sunlight that came after. This gave us two very different photos of the same place and time. I balanced the phone on a post for a joint selfie, her in her white jacket and me in sensible navy blue, but the wind knocked my phone off the post and it only caught our feet. <br />
<br />
‘Let’s do a before and after,’ she laughed, ‘and see how dirty you get.’<br />
<br />
‘And how clean you stay,’ I replied.<br />
<br />
It’s amazing we’re friends at all.<br />
<br />
Outside the station area, beyond a once-white picket fence, there was a rubbish bin. It was a plastic bag held up by a ring with a rubber lid. The bag was inside out and drooping over the side. A mass of sweetie wrappers led off like a treasure hunt in the direction of the prevailing wind. It was clear the lid didn’t stay shut in a gale. We set to with our own plastic bags, laughing at the oddments we found: a child’s sun hat, a pair of American tan tights, a crime novel and an entire newspaper (Ria checked the page numbers). I was done in half an hour, by which time I was also well warmed up, feeling rather pleased about being so virtuous, and ready for some brisk walking. I sat on the bench on the platform and watched Ria vanish over a small rise, still looking for pages five, six, forty-three and forty-four of a forty eight page tabloid. After ten minutes I lay down on the bench with the rubbish sack under my head for a pillow and looked at clouds, and after another ten, fell asleep. Twenty minutes later I woke shivering under a grey sky.<br />
<br />
‘There you are,’ said Ria. ‘I thought you’d gone on without me.’<br />
<br />
‘I did consider getting on the next train. Oh no, we’re doing that anyway.’ The next train was also the last and only one. <br />
The path we had chosen was a circumnavigation of a mountain, passing through some forestry, over a couple of hills, crossing two rivers and skirting three lochs. This was all laid out before us like a great glittering banquet. The trail would bring us back to the railway station in time for this one and only train homewards. It was a good plan.<br />
<br />
But it went a little awry. We had just started off, this time facing into the wind, when we came across a bright shiny purple chocolate wrapper and a walking pole. Ria drew out some antiseptic wipes to wash down the perfectly functional stick while I stuck the wrapper in a side compartment of my backpack. Ria noticed and winced.<br />
<br />
She tied the stick to her pack and wiped her hands. ‘Aren’t you going to put that in a bag?’ she said, pointing at the pocket. <br />
‘I can’t be bothered,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait until there’s more.’<br />
<br />
Despite the idyllic setting, in which there seemed to be no rubbish whatsoever, I didn’t have to wait long. Suddenly there was rubbish everywhere we looked. Maybe I had never noticed how far little scraps can travel. I don’t know. They seemed to be lurking under every clump of heather, and teasingly just visible. Twenty yards later we got out our plastic bags. Ria put on her special gloves and offered me a pair which I refused because I work all day in an office building. I like the wind on my skin.<br />
Soon there were decisions to be made about how large an item of rubbish had to be before I bent to lift it. We’d never do our walk if we stopped for every fag end.<br />
<br />
The wind was stronger than we’d anticipated but the sun came and went as the clouds drifted and thickened. We were mildly disappointed there was no-one else on the trail. Correction, I was disappointed. Ria was too absorbed in gum wrappers. She also missed the heron flying awkwardly to the loch shore and the herd of deer sheltering in the woods, and I had to point out the two buzzards dancing in mid-air and making the most extraordinary noises.<br />
<br />
At the first river I slipped off a stone then tripped over another and landed up to my knees in peat-brown water. I nearly went flat on my face too and got splashed across my back side and up my sleeves. Meanwhile, Ria scooped a brown shoe, about size ten apparently, just one, from amongst the rocks at the ford and didn’t notice I’d fallen. Luckily my boots were tied so tight that very little water seeped in, but it wasn’t long before my jeans started chaffing.<br />
<br />
I know, you’re not supposed to wear jeans for hillwalking, but I hate the noise of those special trousers, the fablon ones, or whatever it is they make them with. However, I learnt the error of my ways that day and quickly had raw patches on the insides of my knees and a burning sensation at my upper inner thighs.<br />
<br />
No matter. The sun shone for the next half hour and it was only later when we came out of the forestry that we realised the sky had turned a dark gunmetal grey. By this time my arms were tired manoeuvring the black sack full of junk. My jeans were mostly dry but there was a dark red rust stain down my lower leg which I kept thinking was blood. As if by some magic, Ria’s clothes were completely untouched by path mud, bog splatter or garbage leak.<br />
<br />
It was disappointing to see milk cartons around an old bonfire, ring-pulls between the logs that surrounded it, half rotted beer cans in a collapsed heap amongst the ashes and, worst of all, gun cartridges. We found twelve cartridges in all and Ria took a photo of me with ten of them over my fingers.<br />
<br />
‘What a great job we’re doing,’ she said without joy.<br />
<br />
We stopped at this cold bonfire and ate our sandwiches, then tried to compact the contents of the bags to make them easier to carry. We hadn’t actually considered the fact that we might fill two whole plastic bin bags each and have to carry them the length of the trail. Unfortunately, compacting them meant we could cram more in, and it was only when we came to a confusing divergence of the path an hour later that we realised neither of us had the map. First we emptied our back packs then, finding nothing, the rubbish bags.<br />
<br />
‘Why don’t we just burn some of this?’ I said.<br />
<br />
‘It’s horrendously polluting,’ she replied with an ill-concealed tremor of disgust.<br />
<br />
At last the map was found, slightly damp and sticky and smelling of the mostly empty beer can we had found three miles back. Ria got out the antiseptic wipes and we chose our path.<br />
<br />
After another hour, the darkness of the sky had more to do with time than weather and we realised the station was still at least thirty minutes distant. In our haste, I stumbled once more as we re-crossed the river, this time landing heavily on my rubbish bag. The resulting BANG made me wonder if one of the gun cartridges had been loaded, so I was relieved to find the wet sensation up my front was only water.<br />
<br />
While I lay freezing in the river, some of the rubbish wound its way down stream with Ria in hot pursuit. There was little I could do about the rubbish which had escaped back to the wilds. My bag was burst from top to bottom and only a cradle of its sheet remained. I did have a small spare one I’d brought with my lunch inside and another to keep my book dry. I began to divide the rubbish between the two. But panic suddenly overtook me. If we missed the train, I’d die. It was late October and I was soaking wet. We had no shelter and no phone signal. I yelled for Ria at the top of my voice.<br />
<br />
‘Hurry up! Forget the fucking rubbish. I’m going to die of exposure out here.’ We were on the last bit of the circle. The wind was against us. She couldn’t hear any of it. It was only when I waved like a wind turbine that she noticed and came back. I carried on yelling after she hurried towards me because it warmed me up and because opening my lungs into the approaching gale stopped the rising panic.<br />
<br />
‘We’re going to miss it,’ I hissed. ‘And all because of this stupid rubbish.’<br />
<br />
‘We’re not. And this is important. How could you be so selfish?’<br />
<br />
‘We have five minutes.’<br />
<br />
‘We have twenty-five,’ she said in a sensible voice.<br />
<br />
‘Bollocks, my watch is broken.’<br />
<br />
‘Hurry up then.’<br />
<br />
‘We should never have come. All this rubbish. I didn’t realise what a mess our country is.’<br />
<br />
‘All the more reason. Stop complaining and get a move on.’ She charged ahead of me.<br />
<br />
Arguing did at least keep the blood flowing into my chin as the east wind began to bite it. We ran past cotton buds glowing in dark heather, scrunched up tinfoil catching the last of the light and a broken umbrella pointing jagged spokes at the angry sky. <br />
We sat at either end of the station bench, back to back, me chewing the last of my toffee biscuits, her crunching on a granny smith. My jeans were stiff. I wondered if they were already ice and how long I had left to live. The train didn’t come. A slice of yellow light sat on the horizon and skited along the rails the train should have been on. The clouds were black smoke above. <br />
Then the rain started. There being no shelter, I put one of the bags on top of my head. I was, of course, wearing my favourite hat, a bright Shetland wool one, slightly lopsided, which I’d knitted myself. The bag on my head was Ria’s, the one that hadn’t burst. In fact there was a little tear, out of which ran the contents of a banana milk carton and directly through the dropped stitches of my celebrated hat, and attached itself to my scalp.<br />
<br />
The train still didn’t come, but the gale did and with it the rain thickened until there was no glimmer of light on the horizon, only darkness beyond the one dim bulb that flickered over our heads as its shade swung in the wind.<br />
<br />
The train was late. I was too wet to sit anywhere inside it and too tired to dig out the dry clothing I’d brought in yet more placky bags, so I went to the bike area and lay down on the floor. I don’t know where Ria went, because I only woke up when the cleaner arrived. She kindly relieved me of my collected rubbish and helped me onto the platform.<br />
<br />
I spent a week in bed amongst Lucozade bottles, Lemsips, used tissues and increasingly damp sheets. The autumn weather continued wild and when I emerged the following weekend there were no leaves on any of the trees. <br />
<br />
I did not hear from Ria. Our weekly excursions, which usually continued through winter, came to an abrupt end. I flicked through the photos on my phone and laughed at the selfie of our feet, her boots pristine, mine still carrying mud from previous trips. <br />
But, on my instigation, we had one more excursion together that autumn, a short walk up a hill on a well-kept pathway and not far distant from our homes. We passed several people. Ria was oddly silent and allowed me to be our ambassador. I greeted our fellow humans with a friendly ‘hello’. Despite my outward cheeriness, I was depressed by all the rubbish. I had walked this way many times before, knew it well and considered if a fine clean piece of countryside. But all I saw was Twix, Mars, Kia Ora, and Morrisons. When birds swooped across my path I imagined them mistaking bottle tops for berries, sweetie wrappers for seeds and socks for cheese. This last made me laugh so I told Ria, hoping to lighten the mood.<br />
<br />
‘That is exactly what happens,’ she quipped. ‘It’s no laughing matter.’<br />
<br />
‘Even the socks thing?’ I laughed. The more serious she was, the sillier my thoughts became.<br />
<br />
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she growled. ‘Don’t you even care?’<br />
<br />
‘Of course I care,’ I said. A bird the shape of the lunchbox swooped through my mind. ‘I know this is serious.’<br />
<br />
‘Do you?’<br />
<br />
We glared at each other.<br />
<br />
‘Why are you so angry?’ I said. ‘Of course I care but since our last trip I see debris everywhere, and it’s awful. It’s depressing.’<br />
<br />
‘That’s because it is everywhere.’<br />
<br />
‘No it isn’t. I certainly didn’t see it everywhere before, but now I do. I can’t enjoy the grass swaying like hair in the wind, or the purple heather against the peaty earth, or …’ Here I paused. Her eyes were fixed on mine, daring me, as if I was the most abhorrent piece of rubbish stuck to her shoe. ‘ … your company. I can’t enjoy your company because you’re being weird.’ I finished. Not laughing now, and gasped at what I’d said.<br />
<br />
She smarted. The wind threw a dark curl across her face. She whisked it away as if it was a wasp that had stung her. The rims of her eyes reddened, then narrowed.<br />
<br />
I chewed my lip. I should apologise, I knew it, but I couldn’t. The slit eyes were putting me off.<br />
<br />
A woman holding a toddler passed us. The little girl sucked a biscuit in a wrapper and listened to her mother recite a nonsense rhyme.<br />
<br />
‘Eenty-teenty, heathery-beathery,’ she murmured.<br />
<br />
‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’ said Ria, once they were gone. ‘You said hello to everyone else.’ She swung her pack onto the ground, wrenched it open and took out a half filled plastic bag and some gloves. ‘I wasn’t going to do this, for your sake, I wasn’t going to bother, but I can see now how selfish you are and that you don’t care, and that the earth matters a million times more than you.’ She flicked the bag as if she was cracking a whip then dived into a bush.<br />
<br />
I was rooted to the spot, then I noticed the toddler and her mum coming back down the path. The girl had dropped her wrapper and the mum was trying to pick it up without letting the child fall. I rushed to help and stuffed the wrapper in my pocket. We exchanged a few words about balance and life being top-heavy and they went on their way.<br />
<br />
Ria had gone. Back pack, placky sack, wet wipes and all. I turned back down the hill determinedly resisting the temptation to scan the ground for rubbish. <br />
<br />
A month later I got a round robin email from her inviting me to a community clean up. ‘Dear Caring Friends,’ it began. Being late November, even the hedgerows had shrunk back. Rubbish was suddenly everywhere.<br />
<br />
‘That’s the point,’ said Ria. ‘It’s so much easier to do it now than in summer.’<br />
<br />
The car park at her chosen spot was full. It was popular with picnickers, the kind who want to admire the view without leaving their car. Ria sent me round to knock on the windows and ask if they were here for the clean-up. But none were, though I did persuade four lads smoking joints in an escort not to throw any more biscuits papers out the window. Two of them danced around their car for five minutes retrieving anything they had already tossed, but nothing that wasn’t theirs. I gave up when I found my old chemistry teacher snogging my mum’s friend across a gear stick.<br />
<br />
A sharp frost made everything hard and stuck together. Even inside protective gloves our fingers froze. Ria had brought twenty pairs of these special gloves and several mechanical grippers for people with bad backs. This gave the three of us, Ria, myself and the mysterious John, plenty of choice. John arrived silently by bike, remained silent apart from giving us his name, bent entirely to Ria’s will, and left without saying goodbye.<br />
<br />
It was the most miserable day of my year thus far. We began on the trail, watching the car park from a distance and soon realised the car park was where the main problem lay. We filled several bin bags, many of which were ripped apart again by someone’s Jack Russell while we were crawling in ditches. We squeezed as many bags as we could into the car. Naturally, Ria emerged from the whole ordeal spotless while I chanced upon some unspent tomato sauce packets.<br />
<br />
I drove the bags to the dump a few miles distant and left her collecting more rubbish. When I returned we repeated the process, and when I returned a third time it was clear she was replenishing the pile quicker than I was filling the dump.<br />
<br />
We argued for several minutes until she agreed to stay and guard the pile against hounds and seagulls and fill no more bags. I did three more runs. The car seats were covered in Buckfast tonic wine, charcoal from a barbecue and oily mud. Ria broke her promise and spent the time filling more sacks and hiding them behind a stone wall, which was patently stupid because dogs, and probably seagulls, navigate by smell not vision. I agreed to return early the next day to collect them but told her she wasn’t invited because at some point we had to stop.<br />
<br />
‘I’ll never stop!’ she yelled. If we hadn’t been several miles from home with the light fading fast, I’d have left her there. As it was, she produced another plastic bag, laid it across my passenger seat and sat her pristine bottom upon it. We drove in silence.<br />
<br />
When I returned the next day, Ria had cycled out with the mysterious John who had also brought a dog trailer which was capable of holding two full bin bags without toppling over. I took a load to the dump then decided I needed cheering up and went home for a late warming breakfast on my own. But anxiety for Ria took me back out there in the evening.<br />
<br />
The car park was empty. There was not a speck of rubbish in it and no-one to be seen. Neither were there any piles of black bin bags. I ventured into the easterly wind and by the light of my torch found a giant mound of shiny black bin bags, like a pile of copulating slugs, under a green tarpaulin amongst the trees. Tutting under my breath, I was about to leave when a flicker of light in the woods caught my attention. My heart skipped a beat, two in fact. I cut the torch, stumbled out of the half-light into the forest and stood in silence. Ria’s head torch and white jacket moved between the trees. Small supermarket bags full of rubbish were piled under a pine tree.<br />
<br />
I turned on the torch and swung it about to attract her attention, which it failed to do. <br />
<br />
‘Ria,’ I called. I noticed her bike half hidden in some gorse by the path.<br />
<br />
She didn’t hear me. Perhaps she was wearing earphones. This seemed unlikely as she didn’t like music. I spoke a little louder and approached with the torch swinging back and forth. I didn’t want to frighten her. She was digging crisp packets out of an icy puddle at the root of a tree. I paused until she stood up. She shook the bin bag in her hand and walked round me and then round the tree, examining the ground at its roots. Then she moved to another tree.<br />
<br />
‘Ria,’ I said, noticing her ears had no plugs. <br />
<br />
She began to mutter something as she passed me again en route for another tree. ‘… freezing … minus four, probably … similar to submersion so … fifteen minutes max ... but with wind factor ...’ She stood straight and looked me in the eye. ‘Need to start again,’ she said with a shake of her head. Setting down her bags, she counted something on her fingers.<br />
<br />
‘It’s going to snow tonight,’ I said. ‘The forecast said so. Why don’t I take you home?’<br />
She moved silently across the pine-needled floor to another tree and began poking about. I saw her hands were ungloved. They seemed blue in the LED beam and had several cuts.<br />
<br />
‘Your hands are cut,’ I said.<br />
<br />
‘No they’re not,’ she replied without hesitation.<br />
<br />
I glanced at my watch in the dark and couldn’t see it. ‘It must be half eight,’ I said. ‘We can put some of these in the boot.’ I tapped the pile of white shopping bags with my toe. ‘I’ll help you down with them and take you home.’<br />
<br />
The first few snowflakes landed on the path a few feet away, but despite much cajoling, haranguing, and pleading, Ria wasn’t going home. Ria wasn’t stopping. Ria was staying until the job was finished, which would be never.<br />
<br />
She didn’t say this. She didn’t speak at all. Even when I got in front of her so she had to walk round me again, her jaws were clamped shut. But I knew it anyway. After an hour of failed persuasion, I started back down towards the car park. There was no signal on my phone until I reached it. I dialled emergency services and told them what had happened. They said it wasn’t a medical emergency but a mental health one and gave me a number to phone. I lost reception and drove home, heated a milk drink and phoned the number. A woman took down all the details and cited legal circumstances in which they could act. We tried to match the situation in the forest to the law of the land. I asked them what to do. They said to stay with her. They explained the symptoms of hypothermia, that naked at zero degrees she might have fifteen minutes depending on wind factor but obviously she was clothed so it would take at least twice that. We speculated on Ria’s possible mental state. They asked about my relationship with her, turning their spotlight on me. I told them I was fine and perfectly sane and asked them what I should take with me in case I found Ria already with hypothermia, though I already knew, as did Ria.<br />
<br />
I was in my kitchen by the stove looking out at the dark buildings opposite lit dimly from within behind curtains and beyond the black walls some orange streetlight. Thick snowflakes made the street lamps flicker until the air was thick with white and snow swirled in updrafts past the window.<br />
<br />
My heart scudded into my throat.<br />
<br />
I threw last week’s contents of my backpack onto the floor and filled the bag with three jumpers, two hats, two blankets, a pair of ski gloves, several scarves and a blow up mattress to lay her on. I filled a flask with hot soup and grabbed a twelve pack of chocolate biscuits.<br />
<br />
The drive was difficult with limited visibility. I drew up in the perfect white car park and humphed the pack onto my back. I couldn’t see the trees, never mind any torchlight. Snow silence reigned.<br />
<br />
It took me two hours. I found her clothes first, folded and piled neatly in the shelter of a Scots Pine. Hat on top, knickers discreetly folded in a square underneath, jeans next, then jacket, two jumpers, a tee shirt and bra folded so one cup fitted snugly inside the other. The socks were one in each boot. This all sat on a pile of unused supermarket bags. Beside it her backpack stood to attention, stuffed full. There was no snow under the trees in which to make footprints. She could have gone any direction. I screamed her name at the top of my lungs. The magic snow silence returned. I took out the biscuits and wolfed two, though they were dry in my mouth, then headed onto the path. The torch picked out the shadows and I followed some slight indentations which had the regularity of footsteps. These then strayed into the tufts and mounds of the field opposite. I swung the torch and climbed the fence to follow them. The field was rough, troughs and peaks of mini snow mountains, and on the far side another stretch of dark forestry stood penitent behind the thickly falling snow.<br />
<br />
Like a fool, I searched the surface of the field for pale flesh, but saw only snow-capped bracken in jagged twists. A winter hare startled at my approach and scuttled out of view. My chest hurt, my drumstick heart beating against my ribs. I ran across the field and back, tripping over the long grass, until I lost sight of the woods or the fence over which I had just passed. Then we were both lost, Ria and I. Her name echoed through the silence and my own voice frightened me. I began to shake. The cold was in my bones, but terror was in every cell of me.<br />
<br />
I came upon my quarry so suddenly I nearly trod on her. She was a smooth mountain landscape amidst the disappearing peaks, her outline unmistakable with knees and hips and shoulders, an unpainted alabaster mask for a face.<br />
<br />
How strange to touch her icy flesh, to draw the new fallen snow from the bridge of her nose and down her cheeks and find her eyes open underneath and ice rivulets running from them and from her nose, but no cloud of breath to match my own. Her naked untouchable body lay hidden yet revealed, and held in a fluffy white blanket that followed every contour, like on a child’s bed. <br />
I shuddered as if I leant against a beating engine and not my childhood friend. My own body wanted to dance some skeletal unburdening, to shout or scream, to let the furnace inside me out, but I set my bag beside her and held myself close, and leant in to see her better with my torch and pleaded with her to not have done this.<br />
<br />
I thought I’d lay beside her and tell her all the things I hadn’t said, like how hard it was to find her and she should always wear red in the snow. I knew she would not hear me. I knew she was a shell. But I was tired and a tiny rest would help me back down to the car park for help. I wrapped myself in my own arms and crept close to her, stretched my legs along hers and closed my eyes.<br />
<br />
But I was jolted awake by a dream that my life was leaving my body. I lifted my leaden head, my arms like unoiled pistons in a steamship, and raised myself from the dead before the pearly gates and walked to keep my blood flowing. I came across a fence, then another, and still another, hitting the ground with as much force as I could manage. After some period of sleep walking had passed, a light showed me the curve of a hill and lit up the snowy sky above.<br />
<br />
‘Light,’ I whispered.<br />
<br />
I walked towards it as directly as I could, falling helpless in ditches as I did, and came to a white road with two black lines along it. I chose a direction and walked until a car came, then hitched a lift to town. <br />
<br />
Copyright (c) Sue Reid Sexton 2019<br />
<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-90210629510235320612018-04-06T03:04:00.000-07:002018-04-06T03:04:20.928-07:00Lovely Layby LifeYesterday was a belter of a day for me. After the lengthy but enlivening snow cover, we’ve had a lot of dull, overcast, wet and cold days. And thanks to the BBC weather department I knew in advance that the sun was likely to appear and the temperature rise, but for one day only.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhwwFkhAwylWws94Bia3lFjLUB_ZyGtu3OiH06RyJvZl8Fp1-imkzB3Suee5-RcQ-rYf7vrBQzXt0PCAjy3DtCJk3p6m2kg-vtMaF19WuD8qy7aCawQRKJRz10vAXNI_8b2jMGtzaP5tg/s1600/20180405_132736.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhwwFkhAwylWws94Bia3lFjLUB_ZyGtu3OiH06RyJvZl8Fp1-imkzB3Suee5-RcQ-rYf7vrBQzXt0PCAjy3DtCJk3p6m2kg-vtMaF19WuD8qy7aCawQRKJRz10vAXNI_8b2jMGtzaP5tg/s320/20180405_132736.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
So I set off in the campervan for the hills. Local ones, mind. An overnight still feels out of the question. Having set off, I could see my destination was in fact white with snow, whereas the countryside I was driving through was a rather pale, sleepy green, and mud brown, not forgetting the black arms of trees against the sky seeming to implore the weather god for something better, and soon. I did consider rerouting to greener pastures, but I know and love my chosen layby. Routine saves wasting time on unnecessary decisions, and therefore keeps the focus on writing. <br />
<br />
My road into nowhere was only passable because forestry lorries, such a feature of Scottish country life just now, had been up and down all morning. But my layby was full of snow, and another car (shock! horror!) was parked at one side. No matter. I had important things to be getting on with.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE-KhZrcdWBG2zYNgyZEhfGjvPxSJdsNQ7v8sx3OE9SSl3hfxhmBNcjE96l110Gv9OCRdpbhmrvphKB2-OG6VrMPVw_VM8FC52KXzTRSClcexDp3gqLf2Gh1EQTu4fL0vryjRMGh3wggQ/s1600/20180405_131110.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE-KhZrcdWBG2zYNgyZEhfGjvPxSJdsNQ7v8sx3OE9SSl3hfxhmBNcjE96l110Gv9OCRdpbhmrvphKB2-OG6VrMPVw_VM8FC52KXzTRSClcexDp3gqLf2Gh1EQTu4fL0vryjRMGh3wggQ/s320/20180405_131110.jpg" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div><br />
So I got in the back and made tea (obviously) and considered my options. The sun was doing its best and where it was breaking through the clouds, the hillside was dazzling. So I decided to chance it and opened the back door, the better to afford a clear view of the hillside opposite, which I think you’ll agree is rather lovely with the snow picking out drainage features, rock structures, fields and enclosures. There was heat in that sun. It seemed wise, if not unavoidable, after my tea, to gather my strength by laying back and having a little snooze. I kid you not. I slept in the sun yesterday. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9FwfooOzj-XJVVrVBtcKPM_Cbi2OTXcJPjPvUPgjgNsCAK_4edkBe6YymvSUm2d6r33zsepL2lKdqDTnH9k9_sdZskRN_h656YRonDwooVhJGGAr3tOzfK-qJzCzrXtMdIk8wcV12mc/s1600/20180405_131700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9FwfooOzj-XJVVrVBtcKPM_Cbi2OTXcJPjPvUPgjgNsCAK_4edkBe6YymvSUm2d6r33zsepL2lKdqDTnH9k9_sdZskRN_h656YRonDwooVhJGGAr3tOzfK-qJzCzrXtMdIk8wcV12mc/s320/20180405_131700.jpg" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div><br />
By the end of the day much of the layby’s snow had thawed to chilly puddles. Also by the end of the day I had written loads of words and more importantly, made numerous decisions about my story, sorted out some inconsistencies and moved it on by a couple of plot points. <br />
<br />
As well as all this, and this is one of the real pleasures of layby life, I had three layby encounters, and no, not that kind. The kind where real things are said and no-one has anything to gain by faking it or showing off. First was a woman out walking with (perhaps) her husband. While he wandered on, she stopped to say hello and ask what I was up to. I waved Writing On The Road at her and I gave her a short tour of the van (it’s very small). It turns out she’s a poet. Naturally I offered her all the encouragement to escape and write in laybys as I could muster.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZleKqagewSQe3Q8-3jEpn_3qC3wrxL84NoAqjHGACEbm5jV5hGviHELHcpsuCxnWVlYthEouY3tvNBMS9KjFqTI0XzrCLYMTdg8RCbgC74Q5Dxp5EzIRI7YhSebBzZj3p7Dpx-0ldwXI/s1600/20180405_155353.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZleKqagewSQe3Q8-3jEpn_3qC3wrxL84NoAqjHGACEbm5jV5hGviHELHcpsuCxnWVlYthEouY3tvNBMS9KjFqTI0XzrCLYMTdg8RCbgC74Q5Dxp5EzIRI7YhSebBzZj3p7Dpx-0ldwXI/s320/20180405_155353.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>The next was the sheep farmer who works the land around my chosen layby. I’ve been going there for years and only ever seen him fly past on his buggy with his dog in a box (open) on the back. What a pleasure it was to meet him and get to ask about stuff that’s had me wondering for ages. There was also a walker with rather limited manners, but of course, he might appear in the next book. Nothing in layby life is ever wasted. <br />
<br />
I'll be on Radio Scotland's Out for the Weekend program later on today (about 3pm) if you want to hear me talk about the joys of solo campervanning, what made me write the book and some of the things that have gone both wrong and right. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-45783418902098427062017-11-07T00:51:00.000-08:002017-11-07T01:27:02.138-08:00OpulenceI have many bodies, professional ones that is, and this weekend I attended the 30th anniversary celebrations for the existence of one of them: Person-Centred Therapy Scotland. When not writing, I work in private practice as a counsellor/psychotherapist. Like writing, it can be a rather lonely occupation, so imagine my delight at being with 70 other counsellors in one giant circle of friendliness. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjkK7FmjXtxMoG_WrYWE-bJEAnOvmm84UFdqJVa3UPIJWpioco244K_sJKDPC-eOXsbFW_dfC9cJWM9L8wef7F1nriYYnHrerDOyWWqeb92Isnc8WlgT-kzFjiymVmAQ7zSKXKIwjHnIs/s1600/PCTS+logo2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjkK7FmjXtxMoG_WrYWE-bJEAnOvmm84UFdqJVa3UPIJWpioco244K_sJKDPC-eOXsbFW_dfC9cJWM9L8wef7F1nriYYnHrerDOyWWqeb92Isnc8WlgT-kzFjiymVmAQ7zSKXKIwjHnIs/s200/PCTS+logo2.png" width="200" height="98" data-original-width="165" data-original-height="81" /></a></div><br />
I find the same comfort at gatherings of writers because I do and feel similar things to both these groups of people. And of course what those two occupations have in common is the need to find the right words and to follow stories in all their glorious or painful detail as accurately and delicately as possible. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRGvrhq11HKloBboxYSuEciE7F1kRitVuSygvgrT-itEmfWlPx9zrnrhwdm1O5L0HK-VRyCwEtLHXKR6T-bA5RzHM7ixbSkWcwVtXHpm3FpgcZrbfSlAHyoTX-mjhhdZPyg9hdeuLd1Zs/s1600/20171104_153659.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRGvrhq11HKloBboxYSuEciE7F1kRitVuSygvgrT-itEmfWlPx9zrnrhwdm1O5L0HK-VRyCwEtLHXKR6T-bA5RzHM7ixbSkWcwVtXHpm3FpgcZrbfSlAHyoTX-mjhhdZPyg9hdeuLd1Zs/s320/20171104_153659.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>Saturday’s celebration was a strange day. The venue was Merchant House, slap bang in the centre of Glasgow. Sitting opposite the extremely grand City Chambers at the other end of George Square, but with a comparatively discreet side entrance on West George Street, the grandeur of the architecture is obvious but dwarfed. It's an ancient organisation of Glasgow merchants, including the tobacco and sugar lords. Its constitution dates from 1605, but it’s been in existence much longer and came to its present accommodation in 1877. The interior of Merchant House lives up to the description in the brochure and is opulent. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV4FOcKryNSiEqbS2bC4fQvLQUuJPBLXxBHeBCF5MU37BJft7ge_85_2tG5RgzPDQ2EmSsaY2CY5sMCHyGb9WlR6DWRCu0nTCSNI9oSPsbfUsZnSuRG_u4TO_ZMqBwuTHwAmbgjVFf41E/s1600/20171104_151628.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV4FOcKryNSiEqbS2bC4fQvLQUuJPBLXxBHeBCF5MU37BJft7ge_85_2tG5RgzPDQ2EmSsaY2CY5sMCHyGb9WlR6DWRCu0nTCSNI9oSPsbfUsZnSuRG_u4TO_ZMqBwuTHwAmbgjVFf41E/s320/20171104_151628.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
It seemed an odd choice for a bunch of counsellor, many of whom deal daily with some of the most disturbed, unhappy or deprived people in our society. Huge dark portraits of well-fed white men hung in gilt frames above our heads. Dark panels lined the lower walls and contained the names and ages of dignitaries who bequeathed ‘100 merks’ or more on their passing in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the dining room there was more gold than paper in the walls. In the Grand Hall, a globe and galleon soared in the highest most central spot above what, in a church, would have been an altar. <br />
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Last month was Black History Month. There have been events and exhibitions throughout the country, not least in Glasgow where our slavery history is at last coming to light. Slavery through the centuries and around the globe, including present day slavery, has become the obsession of the writing part of me for the last year. It was difficult, therefore, to view the beautiful scale model of a three-masted sailing ship without thinking of the famous diagram of the Brookes slave ship with hundreds of Africans squeezed together like inanimate cargo. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRiNyKwTFhfRDdda0SKapx8k8GMvAuJ5j4C8rG6WjroA4yMmOwseitahH6-HZdhEyu1vmSSNL7TqSoaXQDPwhpxV17vVffsUz-9hfsHGolUJcEjhyJXa_xX5h401ncwd8_mS7sHjvWjLg/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRiNyKwTFhfRDdda0SKapx8k8GMvAuJ5j4C8rG6WjroA4yMmOwseitahH6-HZdhEyu1vmSSNL7TqSoaXQDPwhpxV17vVffsUz-9hfsHGolUJcEjhyJXa_xX5h401ncwd8_mS7sHjvWjLg/s400/images.jpg" width="400" height="235" data-original-width="293" data-original-height="172" /></a></div><br />
It was ‘challenging’ to view these benign portraits of men amidst the gold with the empathy required of a counsellor when the writer in me knew that much of their wealth derived from overseas plantations they may never even have visited but which were populated by people who were abducted from their ordinary lives and enslaved. The story is of course more complicated than that and Merchant House continues to do the charitable work around Glasgow it was set up to do. This is to be applauded and encouraged, especially today when banks and badly run capitalist ventures are encouraged in their capricious ways by an equally capricious and irresponsible government. <br />
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But actually the history of slavery is as simple as that. People we were abducted en masse, dehumanised and treated with absolute brutality. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18w9ouPK1cc_l0wkbrCiIN6mWmwbyWLJ0rZr7ke1Ba49In4vx1uMVZpxSy1VE1E7zpJW3BUAMBjn7p7NAGntGxUvt2nLT9qroBUGrazb3UCepmDmA17h4WMaArQHScZ5MARR1Er3mzu8/s1600/brookes-ship-cutout-detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18w9ouPK1cc_l0wkbrCiIN6mWmwbyWLJ0rZr7ke1Ba49In4vx1uMVZpxSy1VE1E7zpJW3BUAMBjn7p7NAGntGxUvt2nLT9qroBUGrazb3UCepmDmA17h4WMaArQHScZ5MARR1Er3mzu8/s400/brookes-ship-cutout-detail.jpg" width="400" height="244" data-original-width="328" data-original-height="200" /></a></div><br />
We are horrified by the Holocaust of WW2 and wonder how the Germans could not have known what was going on in their back yard. But we humans are a delusional lot. We compartmentalise. Out of sight, out of mind. A tiny drop of sugar in your tea doesn’t mean you’ve lost control of your diet. A wee dram of rum won’t tip you over the edge of oblivion. You deserve that chocolate because you’ve had a hard day. But the abstinence movement that was popular around the 1790s, the first popular consumer boycott of its kind in Britain at least, when women were engaged in the fight against slavery by, as housekeepers, refusing to use sugar or rum from overseas plantations, was a major blow to the trade in human lives. <br />
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Today most of the world’s chocolate is harvested by enslaved children and young people working in conditions identical to those on the North American, South American and Caribbean plantations. Knowing this makes me careful I my choice of brand. <br />
It is often the job of the counsellor to hold the different and conflicting realities of our clients, and indeed ourselves. It is also our job to do this with clarity, including not muddying up the waters with our own issues. At times it was hard on Saturday to listen to the discussions of the counselling group while so aware of the source of the wealth of the accommodation. But it is my job, and for me it is also my philosophy as both counsellor and writer, to see with the greatest clarity possible what is really going on around me, or indeed far away. <br />
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The reality of the estimated 27,000,000 people around the world currently living in conditions of slavery is a reality which is extremely difficult to contemplate, and less easy to bear. But to be fully human we must see it and know it and act.<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-71095559579055542792016-11-05T04:18:00.000-07:002016-11-05T04:18:34.940-07:00Real Remembrance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv543YdkdB4GZKQ8heySKErzYFSH-NGfkq9Skber289joWL5c0TXhrr_M2fJjTFEeEuZugt7hGhg3pqU1NB8d8uwjdYbCKMizf9D-HSfk79ZST5jRwdZCjpnIlfUA1G6BMNvSq2bs5_eY/s1600/candle+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv543YdkdB4GZKQ8heySKErzYFSH-NGfkq9Skber289joWL5c0TXhrr_M2fJjTFEeEuZugt7hGhg3pqU1NB8d8uwjdYbCKMizf9D-HSfk79ZST5jRwdZCjpnIlfUA1G6BMNvSq2bs5_eY/s320/candle+1.jpg" width="201" height="320" /></a></div><br />
As I understand it, the red poppy signifies the blood shed in fields by young men in a war which was unnecessary and should never have happened. It was never about supporting our troops to go out and shed more blood, either their own or that of others, but this seems to be how the meaning of the red poppy badge has evolved: a political statement instead of a remembrance of the tragic and ugly realities of war. <br />
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So how about we don’t wear a red poppy this time but instead light a candle in the privacy of our own homes and think about all those young lives that were lost in these wars (and others not mentioned on the Imperial War Museum site from where the following information comes): <br />
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First World War, 1914–1918<br />
Russian Civil War, 1917–1922<br />
Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921<br />
Irish Civil War, 1922–1923<br />
Second World War, 1939–1945<br />
Korean War, 1950–1953<br />
Kenya Emergency, 1952–1960<br />
Suez Crisis, 1956<br />
Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960<br />
Aden Emergency, 1963–1967<br />
The Troubles, 1968–1998<br />
Falklands War, 1982<br />
Gulf War, 1990–1991<br />
Bosnian War, 1992–1995<br />
Kosovo War, 1998–1999<br />
Global War on Terrorism, 2001–2013<br />
War in Afghanistan, 2001–2014<br />
The Iraq War and Insurgency, 2003–2011<br />
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And let’s also remember all the civilians on the ground, millions of them, who died incidentally in the name of preserving other civilians. <br />
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Remembrance of the dead is usually a private thing. Perhaps we should keep it that way. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-47297059969380451122016-10-27T03:27:00.001-07:002016-10-27T03:27:11.859-07:00Star Struck <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLFTyfM9w4_AkIHMEBdFPOY0t__1JhGmbgy7C9AIaSS8oi0c7PM4jTK22ermX79gEZO-9Jev0Afw2FQJpbhIBzi1_6RwGz_icxGaz6_0Ml_wKVHeo9898lZRLbOZG2Mqj3vvPTJckeOM4/s1600/IMG_20161023_153039.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLFTyfM9w4_AkIHMEBdFPOY0t__1JhGmbgy7C9AIaSS8oi0c7PM4jTK22ermX79gEZO-9Jev0Afw2FQJpbhIBzi1_6RwGz_icxGaz6_0Ml_wKVHeo9898lZRLbOZG2Mqj3vvPTJckeOM4/s320/IMG_20161023_153039.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a></div>This is the Dark Sky Park in Galloway, southern Scotland in broad daylight in late October. It was taken following tea, oatcakes and red Leicester cheese and, before that, an evening in the company of two strangers in the middle of a field in the dark. <br />
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Newton Stewart was the only area not covered in cloud on Saturday 22nd October. I was a day late for the peak of the Orionid meteor storm but still hopeful of seeing something, so I alerted the Balloch o’ Dee campsite to the purpose of my journey in advance of my arrival. <br />
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Feeling like Susie No-Mates, I hurried down there, hooked up and grilled my fishcakes. The van was glaring white and toute seule in the middle of a (dark) green field below a rise. Along the rise stood a gathering of horses, silhouetted against the twilight sky. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX98prQm6JCSv2V2RXfpX0-3HQz_PoPtQ0Rh3J8cQKaOtOAtvFSf9dDD5Xf4yX2X0KfYfberyXRBMs8N7xi-0iYaWR_gb9HwjKsBHiYF0kAbeGF4HJl0Lv5PZ4z2zjXM41ULsukyTRyF4/s1600/Galloway+1+%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX98prQm6JCSv2V2RXfpX0-3HQz_PoPtQ0Rh3J8cQKaOtOAtvFSf9dDD5Xf4yX2X0KfYfberyXRBMs8N7xi-0iYaWR_gb9HwjKsBHiYF0kAbeGF4HJl0Lv5PZ4z2zjXM41ULsukyTRyF4/s320/Galloway+1+%25281%2529.JPG" width="320" height="180" /></a></div>By the time I’d finished eating, Caroline and David, two members of the BoD fraternity, had elected to join me. We stood peering at the cloudy sky shielding our eyes from the light outside the toilet block. Realising our difficulty, David turned off all the lights and soon afterwards the clouds parted and we spent the next four hours gazing upwards at shooting stars, pale or startling, in all directions. <br />
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My eyes adjusted completely to the dark, a process that takes roughly 30 minutes all in. It’s a measure of my speedy city lifestyle that I haven’t stood still long enough in the dark for this to have happened in a while. The ocular adaptability made the swash of Milky Way distinct and the continued presence of the horses known. We positioned ourselves facing the area we believed Orion to be, the main area the Orionids would be visible, hence the name, but regularly scanned the 180° our necks could manage. It was an evening of delights and frequent gasping at the many shooting stars. We joked that the action was probably all happening behind us. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AW_34aCtrhhUVREJsY8p158N37-nfKUrEUWR1cAlzJzYbtwtM-2QJIn3QOpyxFSMJ_5OcYiapln21rqbcEyrnqVpkgntEbZwTZg2NuqibTDw_x3SDYIfMG7hWhSU00pEqV7FfO1w8RI/s1600/Galloway+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AW_34aCtrhhUVREJsY8p158N37-nfKUrEUWR1cAlzJzYbtwtM-2QJIn3QOpyxFSMJ_5OcYiapln21rqbcEyrnqVpkgntEbZwTZg2NuqibTDw_x3SDYIfMG7hWhSU00pEqV7FfO1w8RI/s320/Galloway+2.JPG" width="320" height="180" /></a></div>Conversation was easy, despite my not having met them before and I’m extremely grateful for their calm companionship. After a while, Caroline drifted home. David stoked a fire he’d made in a pot-bellied open stove and offered me a beer. I was chilled in both senses of the word and also deeply happy. <br />
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The fire had meant we could stay out longer, but it also affected our vision and made the sky re-darken, so after David went to his caravan, I circumnavigated the camper several times and tried not to look at the dying fire.<br />
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Orion crept over the horizon, yes, directly behind where we’d sat, distinctive and unmistakable, and I got to watch through my binoculars the rise of an orange half-moon to Orion’s north. <br />
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At last I stood staring north, thanking my lucky stars for such good company, for the beautiful place, the dark, the Milky Way and a fabulous way to spend my time, when one last bright shooting star shot from east to west in exactly the area in which I gazed. ‘Wow’ was all I could say, over and over, and over and over again. <br />
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Impossible to photograph the dark, but this was the view in the morning:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7YeUYH431qEb41Saq1Maz9D-5_giRf0vsBocfeIanVLwMOC6B3oSmPhuy7WCjdNZItoE3xxiIcvkT-DTiLphmzAHOGWWhst4qwhEtc0JTSTFf9XMmfG2RdtB-7mLyYtUaEJuZrRJNDtc/s1600/IMG_20161023_121507.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7YeUYH431qEb41Saq1Maz9D-5_giRf0vsBocfeIanVLwMOC6B3oSmPhuy7WCjdNZItoE3xxiIcvkT-DTiLphmzAHOGWWhst4qwhEtc0JTSTFf9XMmfG2RdtB-7mLyYtUaEJuZrRJNDtc/s320/IMG_20161023_121507.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a></div><br />
And here's a panorama of Balloch o' Dee: <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLO7Ey1puMbTSrv_mU2pzUIoJ9xJ7gTxfDx7wVXEDuUZJn0nYYbfIAO77qD5QpfwuaW2KDhn6WmOtecY88n_rWNmJK3cQq9ucxzhyphenhyphenrNahyrKX-by8a8eb_lExs5NGRtMEhyphenhyphenlGGJNVZXXY/s1600/IMG_20161023_121709_panorama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLO7Ey1puMbTSrv_mU2pzUIoJ9xJ7gTxfDx7wVXEDuUZJn0nYYbfIAO77qD5QpfwuaW2KDhn6WmOtecY88n_rWNmJK3cQq9ucxzhyphenhyphenrNahyrKX-by8a8eb_lExs5NGRtMEhyphenhyphenlGGJNVZXXY/s400/IMG_20161023_121709_panorama.jpg" width="400" height="52" /></a></div>And their website: http://www.ballochodee.com/<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-85864268055311019402016-09-28T14:03:00.000-07:002016-09-28T14:03:03.352-07:00Jostling head<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjydd3VacIHtKLLNABfPQmv8NjVzSQqZKPTsv1adUt14KlVI0RXdGD7BRQGkCbWcxJWp7VBYwvuUG9VULIlZamZQmZqCuZY8EZqc4wGCIjCtIjG1X_-fbry5p_vOHrwXCg26xz2u6MW5qM/s1600/IMG_20160923_115537.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjydd3VacIHtKLLNABfPQmv8NjVzSQqZKPTsv1adUt14KlVI0RXdGD7BRQGkCbWcxJWp7VBYwvuUG9VULIlZamZQmZqCuZY8EZqc4wGCIjCtIjG1X_-fbry5p_vOHrwXCg26xz2u6MW5qM/s320/IMG_20160923_115537.jpg" width="320" height="320" /></a></div>I’ve always been a split personality. But I don’t think I’m the only one. In fact, I think we all have different versions of ourselves which come front stage from time to time, or lurk behind the scenes pulling strings, or act as go-between linking your extrovert and introvert selves. <br />
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I also happen to think we need all the different parts of ourselves in order to function properly. Whatever. Because so many different things matter to me right now, I’m finding there’s a lot going on in the theatre of my life with lots of ‘characters’ all jostling for space at the podium. <br />
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This is possibly not the best way to introduce the fact that, as well as writing novels and memoirs, ghosting for others, editing dissertations for overseas students, facilitating workshops and so on, I have recently returned to my old counselling business. This is an incredibly exciting development for me. Last week I reread the text which made me fall in love with person-centred counselling all those years ago (nearly 20), <i>Person-Centred Counselling in Action</i>, by my old professor, Dave Mearns, and his colleague, Brian Thorne. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDyrflrlWu1q50Y4LMVF26i1D0fsLW7yV1cvc57CAWuj4Dfy8PPw9neUwmF6aWYwN47DLvfueYRkQWedICDmTojaNKN67z4mEWRaVDntfhDFk_XWG6RjnkrG79MYi1EtreQGEVxI3YV90/s1600/IMG_7820.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDyrflrlWu1q50Y4LMVF26i1D0fsLW7yV1cvc57CAWuj4Dfy8PPw9neUwmF6aWYwN47DLvfueYRkQWedICDmTojaNKN67z4mEWRaVDntfhDFk_XWG6RjnkrG79MYi1EtreQGEVxI3YV90/s320/IMG_7820.JPG" width="192" height="320" /></a></div>It has a boring title and a dull cover, but is an inspiring read and, like the student quoted on page 19, it has always read to me like a recipe for how to offer love (perhaps with a small ‘l’) to another person. ‘It’s about being free to treat other people in a loving way,’ she says. It’s a practical guide, and difficult to do, but I know from past experience that person-centred counselling really does work. <br />
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I had also decided to return to my earlier name of Sue Reid in order to keep Sue Reid the counsellor distinct and untainted by the madness that is Sue Reid Sexton, but those social media gremlins that rule the world now are having none of it. Therefore, I come clean: they are one and the same.<br />
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Except they’re not. It turns out they’re similar but quite distinct parts of me. For each to function fully they have needs which have to be met. They occupy different but similar spaces in my head. I am each one completely when I am actively functioning as either one or the other, such as tapping the laptop keys or engaging with a counselling client. Clients can rest assured that they have my full attention when I’m with them. With writing I’m in more danger or wandering off piste. It’s when I’m not doing either of those things that the confusion, and even discomfort, starts. <br />
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If I’m writing a novel, sometimes characters, situations and sentences float through my mind when I’m doing other things. If something interesting crops up, I jot it down in a notebook and continue with the washing up, still mulling. It’s a bit like sleeping on a problem. The work is going on even when I’m not consciously focussing on it. Likewise, the stories people tell in counselling often linger too. My mind wanders back to them in the days between sessions. Another counsellor once described it as people inadvertently ‘taking up residence in your house of counselling’. You can see how between these two very important activities, counselling and writing, there are a lot of ‘people’ milling about, many needing the attention of a counsellor, others of a writer. The distinction between the two is absolute, but I have only one brain. <br />
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While this is slightly overwhelming, it’s also interesting and stimulating. I’m hoping the various parts of my psyche, writer, counsellor, mother, facilitator, driver, editor and beachcomber, for instance, will sit down together and offer each other food for thought. <br />
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For more information on counselling click <a href="https://suereidcounselling.wordpress.com/http://">here</a>. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-27785817277392104572016-08-25T04:22:00.000-07:002016-08-25T04:22:11.631-07:0016 in a Campervan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAFSCVYmX3RY7OKmbPljAqGg5ZZILtGXj7ugvgJQguleIooIn6_cRj1L7dh0KH2WZkppTHMHss7im_r9P4zYpv7pH9U5sBXAuE_nrTxT83vLvWRWqumEm85rdA96agI1irBOBr8UCaClQ/s1600/IMG_20160801_150645.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAFSCVYmX3RY7OKmbPljAqGg5ZZILtGXj7ugvgJQguleIooIn6_cRj1L7dh0KH2WZkppTHMHss7im_r9P4zYpv7pH9U5sBXAuE_nrTxT83vLvWRWqumEm85rdA96agI1irBOBr8UCaClQ/s320/IMG_20160801_150645.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a></div>Earlier this year I attended a wedding in a remote part of Scotland. It was a second time around for both parties. The bride has four daughters, the groom four sons. The wedding took place amidst much hilarity in Kilfinnan Church and Kilfinnan Hotel. The blended, merged, and by all appearances delighted and newly formed family stayed in the giant (obviously) Kilfinnan House (replete with spa bath, sauna, table tennis, table football and pool table) where they all remained for the duration of the holiday/honeymoon. <br />
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Another couple and their son also stayed, and two daughters’ boyfriends, and I was invited to park my little campervan beside the house. Sadly, circumstances conspired against me so I only managed the nights before and of the wedding.<br />
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(The warmth of this family would make you weep). (Made me weep.)<br />
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Being the type of opportunist I am, I decided to break the record for the number of people I’ve had in that Romahome campervan. All eleven children of Applecross Primary once sat in there with ease, and on another occasion but with slightly less comfort, eleven slightly drunk adults from a Paisley book group crammed in there too. <br />
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Post wedding, we managed all sixteen of us. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2K22eLzmzy5VRxvXLLcoH5ooAeCjMPpdb-BiVJcgp2vJwUKCZ1ojfA69KNtDW56aTZLz2z6vB1UUFaK5JyMBw2J2DSLf_wXZAktWdXny_rTHkaBlOK0v7xwjkYsMhaQ44Q4HRxbm0J4/s1600/IMG_7963.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2K22eLzmzy5VRxvXLLcoH5ooAeCjMPpdb-BiVJcgp2vJwUKCZ1ojfA69KNtDW56aTZLz2z6vB1UUFaK5JyMBw2J2DSLf_wXZAktWdXny_rTHkaBlOK0v7xwjkYsMhaQ44Q4HRxbm0J4/s320/IMG_7963.JPG" width="320" height="180" /></a></div>Here are the other fifteen (without me) including the tops only of two heads. In case you don’t believe me, <a href="https://youtu.be/g5sExqNBMuM"><b>go to this link</b></a> and you’ll see the bride, then the groom, then the rest of the party leaving the van. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwzshhFkAYXKcZoBlFktxcWloi-DvjcOCWKEf8VlXQ3Q9iIoF8kaUuDLrJTTjb1TVxtxwtXPW3MGJFcdrbp9LkaicNsAvrjE6ZE65DUM_r-yxrZW3Y_r5lURh8JGBEojCB0yB397VECHA/s1600/IMG_7960.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwzshhFkAYXKcZoBlFktxcWloi-DvjcOCWKEf8VlXQ3Q9iIoF8kaUuDLrJTTjb1TVxtxwtXPW3MGJFcdrbp9LkaicNsAvrjE6ZE65DUM_r-yxrZW3Y_r5lURh8JGBEojCB0yB397VECHA/s320/IMG_7960.JPG" width="320" height="180" /></a></div>Sadly, Paddy the Irish Wolfhound declined to join in. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQJHld2HoFR7Q2v-xV16wt7Ojl77zOoT_mhDaPzKvh63LrCOY7gikVU8FHPLMO_oWAPSm_xa3uQPSYJdJuYB09rmzck86AlUYgKG3RIIxi5ehI_HHexTG1WpxoEsCmMPKxgO1-uDQoYw/s1600/IMG_7995.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQJHld2HoFR7Q2v-xV16wt7Ojl77zOoT_mhDaPzKvh63LrCOY7gikVU8FHPLMO_oWAPSm_xa3uQPSYJdJuYB09rmzck86AlUYgKG3RIIxi5ehI_HHexTG1WpxoEsCmMPKxgO1-uDQoYw/s320/IMG_7995.JPG" width="180" height="320" /></a></div><br />
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<br />
Later the pet duck was persuaded to leave her paddling pool and join me in the cab. <br />
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How many people can you get into a Romahome or other tiny campervan? <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-77374313032716373512016-08-10T06:14:00.000-07:002016-08-10T06:14:01.153-07:00Absent blogger ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiINTIkK8R6YoK7-x9MPRliD8xIWq2s3SvR5iUBffirXZ_oGGphd3eJ_Dfxu6__0CEg0AEjcxeRTg2cFkdSpu78s35NRK-EB1h1qJEzOm1wGO8weGgZ_M1_DQD5Mzit5lsz4VKZ9OS5sAw/s1600/IMG_20160703_172935.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiINTIkK8R6YoK7-x9MPRliD8xIWq2s3SvR5iUBffirXZ_oGGphd3eJ_Dfxu6__0CEg0AEjcxeRTg2cFkdSpu78s35NRK-EB1h1qJEzOm1wGO8weGgZ_M1_DQD5Mzit5lsz4VKZ9OS5sAw/s320/IMG_20160703_172935.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a></div>Oops! I blogged for someone else this time and didn't want to repeat myself here. Instead I'm adding a link about the rest of the trip to France. <br />
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(It was fab, btw, and I'd go back in a heartbeat. Unfortunately it would take more like three and a half days.) <br />
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The new blog is on the <a href="http://booksfromscotland.com/2016/08/writing-on-the-route/">Books From Scotland</a> website and is part of a special newsletter about travel. There's also a great selection of other books on the subject. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-62285473931782038972016-07-07T02:35:00.001-07:002016-07-07T02:35:25.505-07:00 Je suis arrivée.I left Glasgow for the south of France, a journey of over 2000 kilometres, in horizontal rain and fiercely gusting wind. This lasted for 300 miles. Trees were inside out, windscreen wipers going like the clappers and I was obliged to grip the steering wheel as if my life depended on it, which it did. This was an adventure, but a tiring one.<br />
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I had three audiobooks, but at 70mph could hear only snippets, particularly Dara O’Brain who delivers his punch lines soto voce. These frustrating moments were followed by deafening crowd laughter. Luckily I’d also brought Dvorak’s Cello Concerto which I used as karaoke and sang along. <br />
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Sadly, the American lady on the borrowed sat-nav was inaudible too and had no volume control, but she was clear, if bossy, and always kind when I went the wrong way. ‘If you can, turn around …’<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaO_GuwFko9k2OZb4f_IWVaY2mk7XHvWG2LUX3DRx05ffahjJV_q4i-M9y3gNMHCMCUGCWutj7sT-cE_8gHmFtTd8B_ADyNqaXgwVAyxGsiFstUYMbLzi3k0KvpR5v4RgOnJ460I8B7ng/s1600/IMG_20160703_230033.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaO_GuwFko9k2OZb4f_IWVaY2mk7XHvWG2LUX3DRx05ffahjJV_q4i-M9y3gNMHCMCUGCWutj7sT-cE_8gHmFtTd8B_ADyNqaXgwVAyxGsiFstUYMbLzi3k0KvpR5v4RgOnJ460I8B7ng/s320/IMG_20160703_230033.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a></div>When the ferry left for France, the sky was as blue as blue ever is. I met a friendly Polish lorry driver who bounces backwards and forwards between France and England once a week, living in his cab. He found my mini-lorry-shaped campervan very funny. The French were beating Iceland in the European cup in the open plan bar and a travelling brass band with a ginormous tuba lead the celebrations when France scored and the death march when it was Iceland’s turn. Much alcohol was consumed (not by me) and there were party games at the end including pass-the-drunk-Frenchman-over-the-heads-of-the-other-drunk-Frenchmen. <br />
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I also survived the drunk Englishman who was keen to introduce himself and point out several times, without falling over, that he too was travelling alone in a campervan, was single and the divorce was through and everything. He’d seen me hanging around in a layby in my campervan and in Newhaven during the afternoon, for which he immediately apologised, rather tellingly. This brought home my vulnerability in a van which is so distinctive. I asked him how he was getting to his destination. ‘In my huge motorhome,’ he slurred, ‘because I’m single now and the divorce is through and everything …’<br />
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I exited the boat, shot off into the night and drove for two hours until I reached a rest area. <br />
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The following day I negotiated French autogas which isn’t called lpg but gpl and has a different nozzle on the pump. I had a special adaptor but no idea what to do with it, but thanks to a kind worker at a service station, I mastered it without blowing myself or the service station to smithereens. <br />
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I drove all day. Shortly before bedtime the satnav directed me off the motorway, which was about to become a péage (toll road), and down a winding but beautiful road with a red sunset for a backdrop and a perfect layby set a little off the road to spend the night. <br />
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The next day I survived a traffic jam on the ring road at Toulouse to be reunited first with my daughter and then with my sister and her daughter. <br />
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But ten kilometres before the finishing line the windscreen wipers refused to budge. Despite the red sky at night, there was a large rain cloud hovering. This shroud remained through the following morning so I raced into town and after several attempts, found a garage who fixed it. I negotiated all of this in French, to no-one’s greater amazement than my own. <br />
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Je suis arrivée.<br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-49192553579284684562016-07-01T12:42:00.000-07:002016-07-01T12:42:55.126-07:00Van(essa) goes to France<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJ481SmTerSzLYdtllrEoOliUd2sYysrxMpTMfUKXIp11YvFp7eKQNMG1UlX0wjBGgc4NVXE-c2sDFagX_y-xjIJ7GxtHzqxHLTchq2BAwxWLo9bkiVWKCjNKrpV3FXFjJzjvJ9Q8z1w/s1600/IMG_20160701_191040.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJ481SmTerSzLYdtllrEoOliUd2sYysrxMpTMfUKXIp11YvFp7eKQNMG1UlX0wjBGgc4NVXE-c2sDFagX_y-xjIJ7GxtHzqxHLTchq2BAwxWLo9bkiVWKCjNKrpV3FXFjJzjvJ9Q8z1w/s320/IMG_20160701_191040.jpg" /></a></div>It’s ridiculous but true. Both myself and Vanessa Hotplate are in a state of disarray. We are travelling south through the whole of England tomorrow, then boarding a ship for France on Sunday evening. The journey is 2043km, or 1276.875 miles (to be exact). ‘Yikes’ is my new word.<br />
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There is nothing difficult about this trip really. Just that it’s long I’ll be travelling alone and Vanessa is a very small quite elderly campervan. The van is in tiptop condition with new spark plugs, rewired sound system, full service and repaired lpg fuel tank. The AA (automobiles not alcoholics) are covering any breakdown and Tomtom has already worked out my route. I have a Scotland sticker for the bumper to indicate friendliness to the EU. What could possibly go wrong? <br />
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Sadly I forgot to pay the same attention to my own health and have jiggered my knee squeezing past clothes horses in my small kitchen. I can barely walk, but I can still drive, which is a relief. I have been advised to stop every so often for tea and waggle my leg under the table while I’m at it. <br />
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Many have gone before me in this travelling solo in foreign lands business. I will do my best to emulate them. <br />
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I have some paid editing to do, but otherwise this is a visit to family and an opportunity to get on with the new novel which has stalled at 19k words. Even the young novel needs a health check. <br />
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So, my washing is still drying in the rain, everything that shouldn’t be in the van has been removed and spread all over the house, and everything that needs to be in it is accumulating by the front door. <br />
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How will there ever be room for creative thought? I am massively excited. And also scared witless. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-43138932415427587862016-06-23T03:49:00.001-07:002016-06-23T03:49:05.849-07:00Knitting on the roadDear protector of the humble campervan, please make this trip peaceful and easy and keep the mechanics of my van, the lovely Vanessa Hotplate, running smoothly. There is so much fun to be had at Woolfest in Cockermouth and I have an accomplice. This is, therefore, not a solo writing trip but a jaunt to the land of Angles and sheep. <br />
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We are leaving at the crack of dawn, or slightly after. We’re in Scotland where the dawn will happen at 4.30 am and 7 is about as early as I can do. Sarah Henry, my partner on this adventure, used to be a knitter, like me. Now she’s a spinner too. Her brother has taken to breeding Merino sheep. This is an unusual thing to do because Merino sheep are delicate souls and don’t like the damp British weather. Who does? But as he’s a vet he will know how to cosset these little souls and ensure they produce lots of lovely soft wool. <br />
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Sarah and I will stuff Vanessa Hotplate with sleeping bags, tea bags and other essentials, and five raw fleeces. We will then charge down the motorway to Cockermouth, unload the wool for selling, then go and buy other people’s finished yarn and fill up the van again. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBA6dZcVyQGI2-iVjkHN1I4Is4uSZYA53DLPBXJNm_QbwYjLpbTUTLLEdT4Fs1VvetiDADvhXOmLDWU_lQ9gQLv3oYesQ1onCBKWE89TjDLdCTRkfqrzO6nY6W2TR8aEsokzfvCKoHfKw/s1600/IMG_20160623_111828_hdr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBA6dZcVyQGI2-iVjkHN1I4Is4uSZYA53DLPBXJNm_QbwYjLpbTUTLLEdT4Fs1VvetiDADvhXOmLDWU_lQ9gQLv3oYesQ1onCBKWE89TjDLdCTRkfqrzO6nY6W2TR8aEsokzfvCKoHfKw/s320/IMG_20160623_111828_hdr.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Or rather, I will. Sarah not only spins wool into yarn, she also dyes it into the most amazing colours. Earlier this year, while we were the fabulous Edinburgh Wool Festival earlier this year, she bought me a spindle and promised to teach me how to use it. This is how she herself learned. She also very generously gave me a skein of her brother’s natural undyed Wensleydale and Leicester sheep yarn which I am going to use to make fancy Di Gilpin mittens. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHREnE2Ei30vO1pTpBDiEGh1HIbHdu81Pq6rpgPE0JZdVOf3gzr_fZ-JfEGMaArNw_DzFaMRBSvKEQVwg3bZK6Dw1MZ-Sqd24W1iowdxJB1Aotn_yHYUkoe-Kd2tjB6kpkAcpADEefqSY/s1600/IMG_20160623_112018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHREnE2Ei30vO1pTpBDiEGh1HIbHdu81Pq6rpgPE0JZdVOf3gzr_fZ-JfEGMaArNw_DzFaMRBSvKEQVwg3bZK6Dw1MZ-Sqd24W1iowdxJB1Aotn_yHYUkoe-Kd2tjB6kpkAcpADEefqSY/s320/IMG_20160623_112018.jpg" /></a></div><br />
It seems auspicious that there is some Leicester in there because Leicester features in my current work-in-progress about baby-snatching. Lester is a boy from Leicester. (Or is he?)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKygfTTcDHNJ2_8jI0-5GiZkXsJSTqM-pjFF5810JH5DZIJuVP5rU51qffcmVlOc7QeZsmx5u1NYVYMFmRHxZfct25XMtzkRkV2PZaGq7eXhSaeR3PJgYIFDWM9OcqxLILx-n01pWOM6I/s1600/IMG_20160623_112301.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKygfTTcDHNJ2_8jI0-5GiZkXsJSTqM-pjFF5810JH5DZIJuVP5rU51qffcmVlOc7QeZsmx5u1NYVYMFmRHxZfct25XMtzkRkV2PZaGq7eXhSaeR3PJgYIFDWM9OcqxLILx-n01pWOM6I/s320/IMG_20160623_112301.jpg" /></a></div>This is a selection of commercially dyed unspun wool given to me by a friend who is a felter. I'm hoping that using so many colours will help me learn to spin by clearly differentiating strands. <br />
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There will also be real live sheep at Wool Fest, although none will be travelling there in the van. (Phew!)<br />
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Meanwhile I am cleaning out the van, emptying the toilet, filling the water tank, draught-proofing the back door and generally tidying up. I don’t get many visitors, especially overnight ones, so this is going to be a total treat, as long as everything works ... <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO9n25tRVKhpfbARwR2lkszNih5tysXYbDYM3BeBTghUOYqDcHYmkbHw2XajGIuBHaI2ECXtuuZmDBhXo88iGsdPoiuMySjyFckgH9ReZNnriL2BkiY-Wxil9YONkP5i_MjQ2nZpGIr14/s1600/IMG_20160623_101422.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO9n25tRVKhpfbARwR2lkszNih5tysXYbDYM3BeBTghUOYqDcHYmkbHw2XajGIuBHaI2ECXtuuZmDBhXo88iGsdPoiuMySjyFckgH9ReZNnriL2BkiY-Wxil9YONkP5i_MjQ2nZpGIr14/s320/IMG_20160623_101422.jpg" /></a></div>Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-9436603255496593872016-06-14T02:09:00.000-07:002016-06-14T02:09:34.405-07:00Books are the biz(Not a list of favourite books but some books that have been pivotal to my reading or illustrate what books can.)<br />
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Every story has a bad guy. In my case it was my dad, who taught English literature at university level (although as I discovered some years later, he himself didn’t have an English degree). He forbade us Enid Blyton books, which were being enjoyed by everyone else, not on the grounds of their dodgy class perspective, racism or sexism, but because they were badly written. He would give me a book, <i>Little Women</i> by Louisa Alcott, for instance, with instructions to read it and come back with comments. Well. No pressure there then. No fun either. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhvtR5HWVgjivmX7OIdT3omE83mdw3TQpB7k5LyZV3UHcMR5ljDYUhoUVLZLvuI10fZmPiYsbnMRjSKeHmNN8boMb1ElFIoz9v2Tt5iW0h5IkcSwita4vAjXkWmRN0tMzGyGsSt3p5sc/s1600/518NBZhnnFL._AC_US160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhvtR5HWVgjivmX7OIdT3omE83mdw3TQpB7k5LyZV3UHcMR5ljDYUhoUVLZLvuI10fZmPiYsbnMRjSKeHmNN8boMb1ElFIoz9v2Tt5iW0h5IkcSwita4vAjXkWmRN0tMzGyGsSt3p5sc/s200/518NBZhnnFL._AC_US160_.jpg" /></a></div>Alongside this were school teachers who gave me dry Victorian tomes (some of which were actually very good) and told us to read one chapter, just one, for next week. This is counterintuitive. If a book is good you’ll be lost in it and find yourself unable to stop reading all the other chapters too. The exercise seemed pointless and not to be trusted. Again, the job was to have intelligent things to say, but not from the more sensible position of having read the whole thing. The consequences of not having intelligent things to say were generally, both at home and at school, humiliation. <br />
After my dad died I found out he was actually a high achieving Classics scholar who had been thrown out of the Classics department for some unknown misdemeanour. He therefore taught and read literature instead - because he had to. He managed to pass the reading-because-I-had-to thing down to me. <br />
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But I knew other people read because they loved reading; simple logic told me this. So, in my mid-teens, I went to a public library, not a school one which had books with ulterior purposes, but a free public one where people went for pleasure and bus timetables. <br />
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No-one knew I’d gone to the library and no-one except the librarian knew what I’d done there. There was no judge (my dad) and no jury (the school). I could read what I liked and take out several books at once. If I didn’t like them I could take them back the next day and try another few. This was a very important development: I was learning independent judgement. <br />
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I was also learning how to read critically. Studies have shown that children who read early do well later on. This is probably because they learn independent judgment at a formative stage through reading and questioning books. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXzu-RA3Xkk4XF0cas8gJ76epVdwWWN8qGpOdOW9BZnn7gf04m6ASbWm0zZJl5YbuSZPjskHk3SryFG14en3FKkNccIHf-10oCNdyFgRWj91sJzqr_Y62_f6dZ3hZjQECUsWM1A4qddK4/s1600/IMG_7841.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXzu-RA3Xkk4XF0cas8gJ76epVdwWWN8qGpOdOW9BZnn7gf04m6ASbWm0zZJl5YbuSZPjskHk3SryFG14en3FKkNccIHf-10oCNdyFgRWj91sJzqr_Y62_f6dZ3hZjQECUsWM1A4qddK4/s200/IMG_7841.JPG" /></a></div>One book I remember from that time taught me I could travel the world through reading. It was <i>When Rain Clouds Gather</i> by Bessie Head. To my knowledge, I’ve never met anyone else who’s read it. Set in Botswana, the book opened up a whole continent to me, a new world with different challenges and values from my own. In that sense, it was indeed like a sudden shower after rain clouds have gathered. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiju9tLRnX0aLoDU_RGe3beTINunKsAnCC98cHr6tCgKomeRbvw7EMmW5E8tdzxqRuMEXY0OhyKPYt8cCj8v6k_kau4F5LNnNlaxnu0YWAKV6tTUd3pqHtUZMnBzcX1X1Bn0kDsm-rwNk/s1600/51td47pPc0L._SX356_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiju9tLRnX0aLoDU_RGe3beTINunKsAnCC98cHr6tCgKomeRbvw7EMmW5E8tdzxqRuMEXY0OhyKPYt8cCj8v6k_kau4F5LNnNlaxnu0YWAKV6tTUd3pqHtUZMnBzcX1X1Bn0kDsm-rwNk/s200/51td47pPc0L._SX356_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" /></a></div>In this way, I also discovered the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe and Saki. For me these were like the grown up version of Grimm’s <i>Fairy Tales</i> and those of Hans Christian Andersen which I’d enjoyed as a child. My mother was much kinder in her encouragement of my reading. Other gems from her I still cherish are the <i>Flower Fairy books</i> by Cicely Mary Barker with her beautiful delicate paintings. <br />
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My secret reading vice gathered pace. I discovered Kurt Vonnegut, laughed out loud in public places, and read everything he’d ever written. I borrowed books all over the place. I read Samuel Beckett’s Malone trilogy a few pages a night over a year. The narrative voice was so relaxing it <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXt7RE8XPRIdQkhhoFMOua01KYNjvRKDkL3M7m0SNeYtZa-ZS5bkMkrXUbRPwPOWdFdE_DFZ_qGXVaRLanCApl2WjZYvnPi2dc5lCbUnoQdzIjmIatzbyn1FG2bL7zCupEktdMgUhCgu4/s1600/IMG_7819.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXt7RE8XPRIdQkhhoFMOua01KYNjvRKDkL3M7m0SNeYtZa-ZS5bkMkrXUbRPwPOWdFdE_DFZ_qGXVaRLanCApl2WjZYvnPi2dc5lCbUnoQdzIjmIatzbyn1FG2bL7zCupEktdMgUhCgu4/s200/IMG_7819.JPG" /></a></div>helped me sleep.<br />
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I finished nearly everything I started. This discipline was a hangover from my dad, but a good one. One notable exceptions was <i>Ullyses</i>, by James Joyce. I had enough confidence by the time I encountered it to know I had a reasonably efficient brain and that if an author lost me it wasn’t entirely my fault. <br />
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Then I became a mum and time was suddenly limited. I also had post-natal depression after my second child. As anyone who’s suffered depression will tell you, one of the great losses through this illness is concentration. Despite books being my salvation in hard times, I simply couldn’t focus long enough to read a whole book, or even a chapter, or even a page when it was really bad. And none of the books I found during that time seemed to reflect my actual experience. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK1Rvw4uQMKd0URx2ft1stuJ8Q2p-HG0bwFekX9RayG2JP6rkvVltfhsSQFHDrTeY9RzhpkQ2vj4oeWsMrOQ8-k2sE5CW3wwLN6NmRP8tOzSoeb41CpaQ_V6-hdFBs5FhWZHoeOVdMVHw/s1600/IMG_7843.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK1Rvw4uQMKd0URx2ft1stuJ8Q2p-HG0bwFekX9RayG2JP6rkvVltfhsSQFHDrTeY9RzhpkQ2vj4oeWsMrOQ8-k2sE5CW3wwLN6NmRP8tOzSoeb41CpaQ_V6-hdFBs5FhWZHoeOVdMVHw/s200/IMG_7843.JPG" /></a></div>A little later I wanted to know more about Scotland’s history and bought a John Prebble book, <i>The Lion In The North</i>, I think. After repeated murders to get to the throne and several bloody battles, I got very bored indeed and wondered what all the women were up to and why they never got a mention. I went browsing in the women’s section of a bookshop and found <i>The Women’s History of the World</i>, by Rosalind Miles. I now have two copies, one which has never been read and is stashed where no-one can pinch it, and another is for my daughters. The three previous copies I owned were all borrowed by friends who never returned them because they simply had to lend it to someone else who never returned it and probably lent it to someone else who never returned it … ad infinitum (I hope). The great thing was I could read this book in bits when I had depression because it was made of lots of little stories about what women got up to, what their role was, and their oft forgotten acts of heroism. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBxfplGxjneiIS_nmjG1_Z9DOk0umYrWNkZlTT5kqHfpL-KMfafXAK2hMSXAjlYaaANLL3JbqDqby8R-osjWaxr0Gf2yCDxCEIAYOO2saaRQgULACUF453MBYKHgV46Vid5QmMjMFmEww/s1600/IMG_7852.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBxfplGxjneiIS_nmjG1_Z9DOk0umYrWNkZlTT5kqHfpL-KMfafXAK2hMSXAjlYaaANLL3JbqDqby8R-osjWaxr0Gf2yCDxCEIAYOO2saaRQgULACUF453MBYKHgV46Vid5QmMjMFmEww/s200/IMG_7852.JPG" /></a></div>I also read to my kids at night, which I loved. Naturally these books were short and to the point, but often beautifully written and rhythmic. These were, I think, a joy and comfort to them and me. The <i>Katie Morag Stories</i> by Mhairi Hedderwick were massive in our house, as was <i>Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?</i> by Barbara Waddell. I also had <i>Hubert’s Hair- Raising Adventure</i>, a story poem by Disney writer Bill Peet which belonged to my older brother as a child. I can still recite whole sections of it by heart. <br />
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By heart is an interesting expression. Some of these books had quite clearly taken up residence in mine. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wsh1J-kU8Uaa4TNu0Oreo34h7PNyhjKRmIZ_bcWQKldo4Yuew16_Q3M7TQ4Q416m7v9Rjsx4lKDUU3NKZp4HPxA24WbHCnxrUTfmTRFLndgo4HRX19kM2jUdTihwfxQZzgBhcuyPb1w/s1600/IMG_7831.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wsh1J-kU8Uaa4TNu0Oreo34h7PNyhjKRmIZ_bcWQKldo4Yuew16_Q3M7TQ4Q416m7v9Rjsx4lKDUU3NKZp4HPxA24WbHCnxrUTfmTRFLndgo4HRX19kM2jUdTihwfxQZzgBhcuyPb1w/s200/IMG_7831.JPG" /></a></div>Then I wound up a working single parent and when it got too much I developed insomnia. Again, a book was instrumental in my mending. This time it was a Dorling Kindersley book called <i>Shells</i>. Fundamentally, it is a picture book full of titbits of information about seashells from all over the world. I used to wander through its pages last thing at night and somehow this often lead to sleep.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpGd7CHuJOwU83UbfE5psgpJ1dBF6Ob8xJKcUVCi9B2YL2PkW2x0jWVZ1ug1egFXdXcqS4oe9LNZkzcjQXu_g5UnKk3VuZz1Y2XKtnkHyc9aDbosTAMczwSlMcN5lxXXyDf4KJmfoO4nA/s1600/IMG_7820.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpGd7CHuJOwU83UbfE5psgpJ1dBF6Ob8xJKcUVCi9B2YL2PkW2x0jWVZ1ug1egFXdXcqS4oe9LNZkzcjQXu_g5UnKk3VuZz1Y2XKtnkHyc9aDbosTAMczwSlMcN5lxXXyDf4KJmfoO4nA/s200/IMG_7820.JPG" /></a></div>Around this time I also began an intensive two year training course in counselling. While preparing my application, I read <i>Person-Centred Counselling in Action</i>, by Dave Mearns. This is a text book and has the most boring cover you’ve ever seen, but the first few pages had me hooked. They seemed to me to convey the very definition of love. This book, like so many of my favourites, was an affirmation of something I sensed but couldn’t articulate. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LLXeS_t-7VTekbbc8CFf-fXPwE-nCSmC7TEVdlANgzC7dTs_Pd-gJJHHDl2_-jTdBMMSelPAaiIhGjVSLNbIOMasQPSj3yoWL3ltCliWeibmqb0HX6uyrFOknL2-D4o2ZaXyx39GBrM/s1600/IMG_7835.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LLXeS_t-7VTekbbc8CFf-fXPwE-nCSmC7TEVdlANgzC7dTs_Pd-gJJHHDl2_-jTdBMMSelPAaiIhGjVSLNbIOMasQPSj3yoWL3ltCliWeibmqb0HX6uyrFOknL2-D4o2ZaXyx39GBrM/s200/IMG_7835.JPG" /></a></div>More love came in the form of <i>The Secret Life of Bees</i>, by Sue Monk Kidd. This is not romantic love but the kind of love that really matters. Of course, love comes in many forms and is often used as a disguise for something else. <i>Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café</i> by the unfortunately named Fannie Flagg is such a story. The book is quite different from the fabulous film, and even better. <br />
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When my bad guy dad died a few years ago I inherited a large part of his library. Most of this was dry old stuff that nobody wanted to read, but there were some hidden gems. The first surprise was <i>Everything That Rises Must Converge</i> (if that's <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6GSAjNeSrjAdxtxGIps7_FO3_Njl0xkPigYpOO3L9DtsXChjxaoKHc0fmbyuv-vOk77lKeYVNT9Icx2R84iGutgjOWdB0SeQAUoYGMmH2H932dbHCTqPZfT8BmgAhllPql4DJp4PxWu0/s1600/IMG_7838.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6GSAjNeSrjAdxtxGIps7_FO3_Njl0xkPigYpOO3L9DtsXChjxaoKHc0fmbyuv-vOk77lKeYVNT9Icx2R84iGutgjOWdB0SeQAUoYGMmH2H932dbHCTqPZfT8BmgAhllPql4DJp4PxWu0/s200/IMG_7838.JPG" /></a></div>not a crazy title I don't know what is) by Flannery O’Connor. This is a book of short stories set in the deep south of America in the 50s which exposes the on-the-ground reality of race relations in that time and place. I then consumed several other books of short stories by, for instance, William Trevor and John McGahern to name a couple. <br />
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This lead to a taste for short volumes, whether they were novels or history books. Unless the story is very good and I want to wallow, I’ve usually got the measure of the author and their story quite quickly and want to move on.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCMs3W88VwCDb_oKxVdiySyv-h8YNANasqo0-UPJAnwP9H6Jxr0NMmP_j5Xtz0cGnsw4lM9tDMJimaPzVCIYzGX2yV3fjAS83cmnW4Qe7_-vBPmIdAYEpbE78QfnycBTTmngXEVtJ62lg/s1600/IMG_7833.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCMs3W88VwCDb_oKxVdiySyv-h8YNANasqo0-UPJAnwP9H6Jxr0NMmP_j5Xtz0cGnsw4lM9tDMJimaPzVCIYzGX2yV3fjAS83cmnW4Qe7_-vBPmIdAYEpbE78QfnycBTTmngXEVtJ62lg/s200/IMG_7833.JPG" /></a></div>One such short history book was I M M McPhaill’s <i>The Clydebank Blitz</i> which was my handbook when writing the novel <i>Mavis’s Shoe</i>. It’s short, concise, informative and readable. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHdKbe2o2vIV1Cf1PItney23QxsZBIewlhOj9fp49SVABIOIUVyenWO_PmiHuI4B-LovLdQMhzSFQrnI0GzO6i95zEOZtp-zb7RBYT1a8M77ozOmqpb_gLHD2fOm_xI7QbsR_yiU6GOU/s1600/IMG_7821.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHdKbe2o2vIV1Cf1PItney23QxsZBIewlhOj9fp49SVABIOIUVyenWO_PmiHuI4B-LovLdQMhzSFQrnI0GzO6i95zEOZtp-zb7RBYT1a8M77ozOmqpb_gLHD2fOm_xI7QbsR_yiU6GOU/s200/IMG_7821.JPG" /></a></div>A recent notable exceptions to this taste for short books was <i>If This Is A Woman: Inside Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women</i> by Sarah Helm. Including notes, this is 823 pages of non-fiction and completely compulsive reading, though also deeply distressing.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhwphVrg-7XOhB0obO1YO16lwrFc-obNBFm9bDym8RZvkAyqySDqARkzZKjNNW5xgp41ausCWU8KdzfLWZxzjhB9wiTeTYOxkjPNGM770tDxBLCCMC3mpVPWYO3d0RJTaa7M88k5DBfs/s1600/IMG_7834.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhwphVrg-7XOhB0obO1YO16lwrFc-obNBFm9bDym8RZvkAyqySDqARkzZKjNNW5xgp41ausCWU8KdzfLWZxzjhB9wiTeTYOxkjPNGM770tDxBLCCMC3mpVPWYO3d0RJTaa7M88k5DBfs/s200/IMG_7834.JPG" /></a></div>At the same time as the MacPhaill book, I read <i>Untold Stories</i> by the Clydebank Life Stories Group, an anthology of recollections of life in Cydebank during WW2 which obviously covered the Clydebank Blitz. For a long time I’ve enjoyed reading oral histories. They confirm a quote by the American poet, Muriel Rukeyser: ‘The universe it made of stories, not atoms,’ and bring history to life.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmoFfUXsCatnNCwp3Q-Z2FkNWmA_KHe_Ay8hNhCuXb4Kp5tv12DFBMBdhaiIZX8DnheOH45GYL5R3HARDbr8Dojzv15Vja1Qx1k5cMpInHFxE97PWFVEipguIz0DPNKiUoZtWys7JrCFI/s1600/IMG_7824.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmoFfUXsCatnNCwp3Q-Z2FkNWmA_KHe_Ay8hNhCuXb4Kp5tv12DFBMBdhaiIZX8DnheOH45GYL5R3HARDbr8Dojzv15Vja1Qx1k5cMpInHFxE97PWFVEipguIz0DPNKiUoZtWys7JrCFI/s200/IMG_7824.JPG" /></a></div>When I started to write fiction, I had to stop reading it for the duration of each project. Narrative voices had a tendency to infiltrate my mind and sneak onto the page while I was writing. Margaret Atwood’s <i>Surfacing</i> was one of these whose narrative voice appeared briefly in <i>Mavis’s Shoe</i>. I left <i>Surfacing</i> for many years as a result and only returned to it this year. This time the influence of the voice suits the novel I’m working on. The book touched me deeply, so I read it a second time immediately after the first, something I’ve never done before. <br />
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A few years ago I took an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Entrance is based on a portfolio and not previous qualifications. This is just as well because I don’t have <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRSu5juvEYDCCrlLdEPRUCuJADP08O3O7McSTz4d9T0QEbKBKcurz6cYC7gW_si8STFvFtWess1cSWgjutB9d82lvL5VgFJGQBVpBDYGUjpFWapvlpfvWDkaVyv0y2wxLQGjvUTcRFF0/s1600/51CNQa0R7wL._SX326_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRSu5juvEYDCCrlLdEPRUCuJADP08O3O7McSTz4d9T0QEbKBKcurz6cYC7gW_si8STFvFtWess1cSWgjutB9d82lvL5VgFJGQBVpBDYGUjpFWapvlpfvWDkaVyv0y2wxLQGjvUTcRFF0/s200/51CNQa0R7wL._SX326_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" /></a></div>a degree. I have two diplomas and various other things but no degree in English Literature which you’d probably think was necessary. I therefore hadn’t read ‘The Canon’, or not all of it. But because I’d been following my bookish nose, I’d read all the obscure experimental weird things that no-one else had, like <i>Riddley Walker</i> by Russell Hoban, and could also read the more traditional stuff with an untrained, unconstrained critical eye. I’m pleased to say I graduated with Distinction. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijRMblnYFc2fWMhyphenhyphen7JcQVbwP1d7ybFypkWdTZrtNJdG8W74LK29BWysOgefzSrBMs3aFkYCLM7ZU10yNgYtPIVxSkhkzFsupRUa5DbE7L3-z9_l4U4wFTIIr72sT8xWnHtuZB4fRcypjM/s1600/IMG_7854.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijRMblnYFc2fWMhyphenhyphen7JcQVbwP1d7ybFypkWdTZrtNJdG8W74LK29BWysOgefzSrBMs3aFkYCLM7ZU10yNgYtPIVxSkhkzFsupRUa5DbE7L3-z9_l4U4wFTIIr72sT8xWnHtuZB4fRcypjM/s200/IMG_7854.JPG" /></a></div>Other books that were important to me were the self-help book about giving up smoking whose name I’ve forgotten and the French dictionaries that used to hold up the front legs of mydesk when I worked in a room with a saggy floor. (Don’t try this with library books!) <br />
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Books are the biz. Libraries give them to you for nothing. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-33260003049820534822016-06-09T10:25:00.000-07:002016-06-09T10:25:32.631-07:00Latest campervan trip #2After all the excitement at the pre-historic hill fort, I continued south until I saw a little road leading up and off the main carriageway. It was in fact a completely flat area, partly tarmacked and surrounded on all sides by trees. The noise of birds was delightfully deafening and occasionally I caught a glimpse of one or two in the trees. Those I saw were, I think, song thrushes and I also heard the squeak of grouse and all sorts of other birds I can’t identify. The spot was private and calm and once an hour I saw the roof of the train passing by just beyond a fence. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnNTzALg_tTaj6m7A1HUzUG9xGP6l1meVi48DVkoqQ3yCScHXiZ8KSqewwvUiC6DNqaPoKEY6ijtBmDwgq4kbW9WZyNowcHMl6IaeO6tqNLhSLZOhtMOQHZXR1_rmBezLcPoomRNLQ77k/s1600/IMG_7814.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnNTzALg_tTaj6m7A1HUzUG9xGP6l1meVi48DVkoqQ3yCScHXiZ8KSqewwvUiC6DNqaPoKEY6ijtBmDwgq4kbW9WZyNowcHMl6IaeO6tqNLhSLZOhtMOQHZXR1_rmBezLcPoomRNLQ77k/s320/IMG_7814.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Loads of words got written and it seemed like a good place to spend the night, but first I had to satisfy my wanderlust and seek more laybys. I was being a ‘monkey-in-tree’ Buddhist, leaving something fabulous for the possibility of something miraculous. <br />
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On returning to the main road I found an information board directing me round the corner to Kinclaer Viaduct which the road winds under twice in a few hundred yards. This makes a delightful twisty corner and is also an indication of the terrain: tunnel one minute, viaduct the next, train on the horizontal.<br />
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Also on the info board were some of the wildlife to be found in the vicinity. These were barn owls, tawny owls, pipistrelle bats, long-eared bats, swallows, adders, slowworms, common lizards, deer and badgers. I wondered what it would be like to fall asleep to the sound of owls hooting. <br />
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Unfortunately, on this occasion I had reason to return to Girvan but I made a mental note of the spot. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZGsZE7g9_mf2XQVUPpTQaV22VCoa_GV37WX1sFgp49oKd3XQPSVtcbKMf8kxo51hmW8v_aDghkax5rPrvaaopTcGceyU5lqG25mdKDrrGBzAmBMd057-GaaS00-cD3C6dCYcFyxvjc-0/s1600/IMG_20160606_140241_hdr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZGsZE7g9_mf2XQVUPpTQaV22VCoa_GV37WX1sFgp49oKd3XQPSVtcbKMf8kxo51hmW8v_aDghkax5rPrvaaopTcGceyU5lqG25mdKDrrGBzAmBMd057-GaaS00-cD3C6dCYcFyxvjc-0/s320/IMG_20160606_140241_hdr.jpg" /></a></div><br />
However, the following day took me in a different direction, to a layby up a tiny back road. My chosen spot was half hidden by a hedge (thanks goodness as the weather was roasting) and got lots of work done there. But then panic set in. The dodgy petrol gauge had already got me into trouble earlier this year. Mobile reception was non-existant outside towns. I was deep in the hills. I checked the map and headed further inland, back to Dalmellington which my trusty map told me had a petrol station. On the way I bought bread in Straiton, used the community-run public toilets there, and carried on. But going straight on through Straiton doesn’t take you to Dalmellington. It takes you directly south to Newton Stewart. About half way along this beautiful road I realised there were no windfarm constructors, which there should have been, and began to slow down. Then there was a tiny road directing me back to Girvan. Drat and double drat. I was on the wrong road. <br />
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Newton Stewart had two kinds of petrol station and was very hot indeed. I immediately returned to the safety and cool of the trees on the mountain road I’d just left, sat by the road and listened to the birds. Aah.<br />
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But the muse was disturbed. I knew if I returned to the Kinclaer layby I’d spend the night imagining snakes making their way into the van through the little drain in my sink and the muse would run screaming. I knew I didn’t want to be four feet from the nearest campervan at the seafront in Girvan either. It was time to go home. So I went. But with 6,500 words more of the novel. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-9246784171215103172016-06-09T10:05:00.000-07:002016-06-09T10:05:54.072-07:00Latest campervan trip #1Being the second overnight campervan trip of the year, packing the van was easy peasy. Also the weather was predicted to be hot, hot and hot so there was no deliberations over clothing either. I knew what I was doing. I was going to write the next section of the new novel. <br />
Heading south, I found a lovely layby on the brow of a hill on a small road just outside Auchenleck. Great, except the little road seemed to be a cut-through for juggernauts. Continuing south I turned to Dalmellington then west towards Straiton pausing halfway for tea and to write, and finally to sleep. <br />
In the evening I wrote an article in praise of libraries and watched the windfarm workmen zoom up and down the little single track road in pickups, vans and cherry pickers. <br />
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I wrote all morning, this time the novel: yay! And did a bit of knitting.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy7WCky7GXsOTTEbpmlQWhW5n4ag4-5vGDVqpBpHlLHnZemDOtZonZm4X9o087t31iU0MYyf8u_7DZlrA1PfNnGGwQlbMqUP1PaI6Y1DYUaNd8EynZ1GLuDneHd-ezIKeU_I6YJVSEm8Y/s1600/IMG_20160604_221843.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy7WCky7GXsOTTEbpmlQWhW5n4ag4-5vGDVqpBpHlLHnZemDOtZonZm4X9o087t31iU0MYyf8u_7DZlrA1PfNnGGwQlbMqUP1PaI6Y1DYUaNd8EynZ1GLuDneHd-ezIKeU_I6YJVSEm8Y/s320/IMG_20160604_221843.jpg" /></a> <br />
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Thence west to Girvan and the seafront. Beyond the line of vans is a promenade and then the beach, the sea and Ailsa Craig, the island commonly known as Paddy’s milestone. Sixteen of these vans and caravans spent the night there with the apparent blessing of South Ayrshire Council who know we bring our dosh to their town. There is even a standpipe at the harbour if you know where to look and paying toilets. Vanessa is the little white van just right of the centre. <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhZUwhXRTvWAK3rXzHI9XppPLCp6ph7Q6W_cuuyeIg3_v7atRviU7VcJvMQDf_6iBRPX8mprRR3JjSIrqUavK0iBW4Mf1j7JibHf8f-dvrvPmN5mUdJMToVqql-mIH33GuIFPwk5AlPQc/s1600/IMG_20160604_212406_hdr.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhZUwhXRTvWAK3rXzHI9XppPLCp6ph7Q6W_cuuyeIg3_v7atRviU7VcJvMQDf_6iBRPX8mprRR3JjSIrqUavK0iBW4Mf1j7JibHf8f-dvrvPmN5mUdJMToVqql-mIH33GuIFPwk5AlPQc/s320/IMG_20160604_212406_hdr.jpg" /></a> <br />
This is the view out to sea.<br />
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Girvan seafront is of course a car park and full of (very nice) people, so the following day I went inland and stopped for tea at the first available layby. It turned out to be directly above a 496m long railway tunnel linking Girvan and the port of Stranraer. The layby is also close to a small but perfectly formed prehistoric hill fort called Dinvin Motte. I stopped a passing farmer and asked permission to cross the field and view it and he nodded. Just nodded. So off I went. On the way I found this:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj083VWg80jalqe70Cg9kH06bvRsK3o0-62GswhaejKPZ7fYgXovT4ff9CjY6aB06flciWnxRCKTTnA4D1H3SfmM0cxBxTrxpzu7Pl_zPRTQGNBel9JgvaXasd8o4w_U6cZg_pd-2cjAa4/s1600/IMG_7774.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj083VWg80jalqe70Cg9kH06bvRsK3o0-62GswhaejKPZ7fYgXovT4ff9CjY6aB06flciWnxRCKTTnA4D1H3SfmM0cxBxTrxpzu7Pl_zPRTQGNBel9JgvaXasd8o4w_U6cZg_pd-2cjAa4/s320/IMG_7774.JPG" /></a> <br />
It's a gorgeously squiggly chunk of wool direct from a sheep. I had to bring it and some others I found with me.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOxLkAKqxC31-I6sXDur_v0ywFBqKlv8KWSVlCDiPAQTAtsEYZn7UgnHT7bWl8rIx438AmNTo8z9NdWdY9vHA27VQpR4oeZSxrFx9NQ3L1QtZWJcw08YL-K_t9H3NkgTTc78SgUnLVFCg/s1600/IMG_20160605_111956_hdr.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOxLkAKqxC31-I6sXDur_v0ywFBqKlv8KWSVlCDiPAQTAtsEYZn7UgnHT7bWl8rIx438AmNTo8z9NdWdY9vHA27VQpR4oeZSxrFx9NQ3L1QtZWJcw08YL-K_t9H3NkgTTc78SgUnLVFCg/s320/IMG_20160605_111956_hdr.jpg" /></a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMoCpBMh2nZLRWF1OyEASoVAg-Uspuka2ROdFMWmIYXmp_qHzdtOzHCCeUiq-ivpb6Phbzg0NvVPMYK6SX0xuE4OCyEX311oUYb95Fq4agGxFeT8i0-C5FnyXkrpm1nr_ecvtn8RkPmvg/s1600/IMG_20160605_111956_hdr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMoCpBMh2nZLRWF1OyEASoVAg-Uspuka2ROdFMWmIYXmp_qHzdtOzHCCeUiq-ivpb6Phbzg0NvVPMYK6SX0xuE4OCyEX311oUYb95Fq4agGxFeT8i0-C5FnyXkrpm1nr_ecvtn8RkPmvg/s320/IMG_20160605_111956_hdr.jpg" /></a></div> <br />
There are three rings of banking to the fort with two causeways to cross on either side if you want to reach the top. The dips between these concentric banks are deep. There was a small flat stone at the very top of the whole thing which I was nervous of standing on in case I was teleported to Mars without warning. <br />
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While up there I whipped out my phone and did a little video diary. It began with the van, a tiny white square in the distance, then panned round to a farmer on the opposite hill rounding up his cattle, then to an incredibly neat vegetable garden which on closer inspection turned out to be stone banking for the railway. Just at that moment a train appeared round the bend, a whole two carriages, then vanished into the tunnel. What uncanny luck! I immediately swung back to the other end of the tunnel to await its emergence and was soon duly rewarded. From this great excitement I did a panoramic shot to capture the whole green grandeur of the surrounding hills, speckled with farms and forests and, closer by, fields shared by cows and sheep all cheerfully cohabiting. Satisfied and elated, I pressed the stop button. Which turned out to be the go button because I’d pressed the wrong one earlier and captured nothing. Sigh and drat. <br />
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I had a strange sick feeling when I tried again, and of course, without the train and the spontaneity of my experience, it was never going to work. So I gave up. The point is, my job is to paint pictures with words. I should really stick to that. The great thing is I paint what I see either with my eyes or in my head, but from my words you see different pictures in your head. Isn’t that great? <br />
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I still think a video would have been nice. <br />
Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-34348448123951421322016-03-06T10:43:00.001-08:002016-03-06T11:07:46.073-08:00Teeny Weeny Campervan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIUnCpUChhSKi1M9twSX7-u_Gp9lnNXuE0t7cCEGvwkAr7OBL5BoGMmqMMFIb3sDOxMWs9H8XFtNTpvtADgYTd5ocB0DTDxO-3hwvHWv70pe1o2jSeOqk4wLhvz0sLDWDFc8zIVhKrAc/s1600/IMG_5020.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIUnCpUChhSKi1M9twSX7-u_Gp9lnNXuE0t7cCEGvwkAr7OBL5BoGMmqMMFIb3sDOxMWs9H8XFtNTpvtADgYTd5ocB0DTDxO-3hwvHWv70pe1o2jSeOqk4wLhvz0sLDWDFc8zIVhKrAc/s320/IMG_5020.JPG" /></a></div><i>Writing on the Road: Campervan Love and the Joy of Solitude</i> will be at the Aye Write! book festival in Glasgow on Tuesday 15th March at 6pm in the Mitchell Library. Books will be available for sale even though the official publication date isn't until 7th April. The description of the event doesn't cover the multitude of sins and blessings within the book, so come along and get the full flavour of my regular escape route to sanity and writing (arguably the same thing) in a tiny Romahome campervan. <br />
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Tickets are available <a href="http://www.ayewrite.com/pages/whats-on.aspx#/event/e448225f-106e-4619-aeb5-a59c00e4fd69">here</a>. You'll also find information about my accomplice, Lorraine Wilson. She too needed to escape from her daily life. Instead of campervans, she chose trains and spent three months travelling solo round Europe. It promises to be an interesting event. <br />
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The picture above shows my little Romahome in the foreground, my neighbours' copycat van to the left, and a removal lorry at the back which mine is trying to dwarf. Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83198819958427713.post-10759822061103802982016-01-21T05:48:00.002-08:002016-01-21T05:55:31.216-08:00Writing on the Road: Campervan Love and the Joy of Solitude<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxsW68c4p9bK-MmjY_tPyEiUAOlUyfhUKkFGcH5ZD_cq38KTvRwkoVmRVkIIdJ6ACbuoHLf2cCFm-5HsaZznYrOgqKj6SIx4aIQCvl9Y-FzPafUlugW63x75ZypqO6USM3jpha7KKOvyM/s1600/final+WOTR+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxsW68c4p9bK-MmjY_tPyEiUAOlUyfhUKkFGcH5ZD_cq38KTvRwkoVmRVkIIdJ6ACbuoHLf2cCFm-5HsaZznYrOgqKj6SIx4aIQCvl9Y-FzPafUlugW63x75ZypqO6USM3jpha7KKOvyM/s320/final+WOTR+cover.jpg" /></a></div><br />
While writing two novels, ghosting two memoirs for other people and working on various other bits and pieces, I needed to escape my hectic household and create some space to do it. As a mother of two and sometime step-mum of four, I realised my only option was to get into a campervan and have it function as a mobile office. It wasn’t long before this had become a habit. <br />
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Whether I’m by a beach with buzzards, golden eagles, deer, seals, surfers, other campervanners and dead fish for company, or in the hills around Glasgow, or France, my aim is to switch off the phone, get out the laptop and write. <br />
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Writing on the Road is not just funny (or sad) stories of campervan trips in Scotland; it is not just ‘Zen and the art of campervan maintenance’ (with stories of sweetness and light that will entertain or make you cry); and it is not just nature writing (with observations of wildlife in Kintyre, Assynt and other places on the western seaboard of Scotland). But if you enjoy reading about how books are written and about recovery stories from relationship breakdown, or about women travelling alone and all the things that can go wrong (and right), about strategies for facing fear, dealing with creepy crawlies and noises in the night, and about surviving all that life throws at you, then you will probably enjoy this book.<br />
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As well as chapters on writing, procrastination, meditation and creativity, there’s information on how (not) to buy a campervan, how to maintain it and what to do if you lock yourself out in the middle of nowhere just before bedtime. <br />
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I hope this book will inspire and encourage any would-be campervanners to get out there, get creative and enjoy the campervan life.<br />
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I'll be appearing at the Aye Write! book festival in Glasgow in March. Meanwhile watch out for my little van around town.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5MvH0sL9Tvs-YlqHrYXeEORbq9zLdloxe6xVBNKBi1pkXo1ls7ztelR9URK3LMZtPbzDNggdeM9IS9I-OGtyqzjV8Tc37piYxL8v1rTYfg25HTvmOJFuHSjNJPpAE8_mTCJNS3kPAecM/s1600/IMG_5181.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5MvH0sL9Tvs-YlqHrYXeEORbq9zLdloxe6xVBNKBi1pkXo1ls7ztelR9URK3LMZtPbzDNggdeM9IS9I-OGtyqzjV8Tc37piYxL8v1rTYfg25HTvmOJFuHSjNJPpAE8_mTCJNS3kPAecM/s320/IMG_5181.JPG" /></a></div>Sue Reid Sextonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01673622749741066666noreply@blogger.com1