The Weather...

A very British subject about which to blog.


The month of June was like March or November -- until today. Thank heavens! This afternoon we’ve had sunshine, a slight breeze, and no rain.

I don’t suffer from seasonal affective disorder, but was starting to think the lack of summer was making me SAD. I need summer. Not only because the days are longer, people are happier, the countryside is gorgeous, and it’s nice to wear sandals and sunglasses … but also because it inspires me.

My novels are set in summer. And though I could turn up the heating and dress for the beach, it’s impossible to fake the smell: sunshine on moist soil, sprinkled with freshly cut grass.

However -- and perhaps because of the terrible weather -- I have written my first autumn/winter short story. And submitted it, today! In fact, this is my first short story submission. Appalling, I know. (I might be the world’s worst writer when it comes to sending out stories.)

More Words, Less Pictures

I’ve felt frustrated these last few weeks because I haven’t had time for writing: Ahhhhh! But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about writing -- which probably made the lack of production even more frustrating.

I knew the balance had been tipped when, two days ago, my face broke out in a rash. This is my exhaustion/stress rash. It is not very pretty, and not how you want to appear when meeting your Mercedes driving neighbour for the very first time. It’s bad enough that my Toyota is parked next to his gorgeously sparkling, top-of-the-range-oozing, sporty vehicle. What does this have to do with writing? Nothing at all. (Well, perhaps there’s a story in there somewhere…)

But, the silver lining of this enforced hiatus is that I’ve stepped back -- and come up with a new title for my YA novel, on which I’ll be resuming submissions, next week. And that title is... Hybrids Taste Delicious. I love it, and can now see how off-track I was with the previous title, which did little to reflect the mood of the story.

Speaking of titles, Conduit, AKA Stuart Neville, has what is possibly the best book trailer, ever, for his well-titled thriller, The Ghosts of Belfast. It can be viewed on his website. Enjoy!

Thirty hours in Edinburgh...

Is not quite enough to appreciate this fabulous city.

Despite high winds and changeable skies, I fell in love with the place -- and am not at all disappointed to have to return next week. :)

Thanks to Travis’s comment on the previous post, I remembered to take my camera. Once I start snapping, it’s impossible to stop; I took 222 pictures. I’ve narrowed things down to what looks like a good cross-section, but -- this remains a very long post!


Hilly terrain and no urban sprawl,
means open views from the city centre



The Glasshouse Hotel:
a wonderful mix of old and new



Public art



Magnificent buildings



St. Andrew Square


Statues and monuments everywhere




A pub



One café...



And another



Sean Connery walked past me, twice, on Shandwick Place. His right arm was in a sling. I smiled, and he smiled back.

I regret not taking his photograph!

~~~~~~

EDITED: There were originally twenty photos to this post. Which was a few too many, so I’ve cut it down to ten.

Bonnie Scotland

Edinburgh is a beautiful city. I remember it vividly even though I haven’t visited for years. (It somehow fell off my radar, usurped by Glasgow.) It’s unique features include two extinct volcanoes, one of them right in the city centre onto which Edinburgh Castle is built; a fact I was unaware of until today.

I have a meeting there tomorrow. It’s a trip I could do easily in one day, but I’m going to stay overnight and spend Friday enjoying the city. Fingers-crossed for sunshine and no rain!

Next week, I hope life will be more-or-less back to normal, after the chaos of moving. I’m hungry to get back to writing and catch-up on blog reading. Bet I’ve missed tons of great stuff!

Catch-Up!

Katie Alender, author of BAD GIRLS DON’T DIE -- a novel I am dying to read as soon as it’s released in April 2009 -- tagged me on May 31st. I know... that was AGES ago! But, with all this moving malarkey... 
Enough excuses; here goes! 

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was living a fast-lane fashion life in New York City; designing by day, socialising by night. I’d worked incredibly hard to reach my position -- but, I wasn’t creatively satisfied, and was starting to doubt whether I wanted to remain in the fashion world for the rest of my life.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

Write ‘snagging’ list (I’m in a newly converted apartment). Meet with developer’s site-manager to discuss that list and arrange for snags to be fixed. Unpack another box or two. (It’s never-ending!) Paint toenails with new silvery-brown nail polish. Finish reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Black olives are my favourite, although I’m currently addicted to almond, apricot and yoghurt Love Bars, and macadamia nuts. And I’ve had a life-long love affair with XL Cheese Crisps.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

First thought: I would give a lot to charity. Second thought: How many billions are we talking about? Would it be enough to do something to stop bio-fuel being grown in place of food crops, and to start producing fuel from household waste on a humongous scale? If so, then that’s what I would do.

I’d also buy my parents a bigger bungalow, and pay-off my little sister’s mortgage. I would design and build a modernist/futuristic house in the country, on a plot with some woodland, a stream, and a field for two horses.

5) Places I have lived:

Carlisle, Cumbria; Wetheral, Cumbria; Dundee, Scotland; London, England; New York City, USA.

6) Jobs I have had:

Waitress, shop assistant, factory worker, bar tender, art gallery assistant, extra in music videos, artist in residence, art reviewer, accessories designer, fabric designer, knitwear designer, trend forecaster.

7) This is where I’m meant to tag six others. Instead, I say this: If you would like to do the meme... then YOU are TAGGED!!! :) 

New Horizons

It has happened. Last week was a blur, but, by some small miracle, and the hard work of two fabulous helpers, I have moved!!! The apartment is WONDERFUL. It’s on the top floor of a converted mill and the views are spectacular!


(I'll take more photos, with my real camera, on a less cloudy day.)

Nothing feels strange or unfamiliar -- as if I've lived here much longer than five days. However, the partly unpacked boxes and general disorganisation prove that I’m barely installed. And I can confirm -- as a scientific fact -- unpacking takes ten times longer than packing.

Speaking of which, it took a non-stop, twenty-hour packing marathon to have everything ready to leave the haunted house by last Wednesday’s deadline.

I am now totally, utterly, and completely exhausted. Which is perhaps why the unpacking is such hard work.

This apartment does seem to be ghost-free. All I’m picking up on the ether is my neighbours’ Wi-Fi. Lucky for me, as mine won’t be connected for another week to ten days. :)

Cardboard Boxes

The final countdown: In 36 hours, removal men will cart my worldly possessions out of this haunted house.

Not all my worldly possessions; I have a storage unit that I intended to use for a month or two -- to which I still have the keys after almost two years! After moving into the apartment, I intend to move everything out of storage. It is probably time I started behaving less like a gypsy and more like a settled, grown-up person. (Perish the thought, says the teenage part of my brain.)

I’m navigating an obstacle course of part-packed boxes, semi-organised piles of paraphernalia, disassembled furniture, assorted tools and packing materials. Whenever I move, I imagine a quick and organised process, but in reality, it’s chaotic, slow, and slightly boring.

There are so many more interesting applications for cardboard boxes. Other than stuffing them full of possessions then sealing them with dull brown tape, one could…

Make an attractive lamp


A warm blanket


A car


A rocket


Star Wars costumes!


A kitchen


Or a monster...


to keep life scary, in case the new property does not come with ghosts. :)

I’ve been a bit of a nervous wreck these last few days, and slightly distracted. It’s been a time of sleepless nights and silly punctuation mistakes.

And now? Well, I’m so excited I can hardly type. In fact -- my hands are shaking! Today, my solicitor confirmed that we have exchange of contracts on the sale of my haunted house and the purchase of what will be my apartment in the sky!!

Because this is the third time, in the last nine months, that I’ve tried to move, I decided to tell very few people about it. (I had begun to wonder if the ghosts were not allowing me to move.) But, in a surprise turn of events, the people who wanted to buy my house earlier this year, then pulled out just before we were due to exchange contracts, realised that global financial Armageddon was not as imminent as they thought. And several weeks later, decided they still wanted to buy this house.

The apartment in the sky was still on the market (phew!), so we started the process, again. But I was cautious. I’d been so disappointed when it all fell through that, until we exchanged contracts, I couldn’t allow myself to believe it was happening. The downside of this is that I’ve made little to no preparations for the move.

But it is happening! And I’m moving on Wednesday the fourth of June!!! :)

I expected the crystal-ball reading to be accurate and true

I don’t like to get political. I really, really don’t. But. What’s the world coming to when laws are being passed against fortune-tellers? Was this a hot issue? Were you running into people every other day, complaining that their tealeaf reading had not come true, that they'd been mislead, or cheated?

New Consumer Protection Regulations, which implement an EU directive on unfair commercial practices (yawn…), target fortune-tellers, faith healers, spiritualists or mediums, and double-glazing salespeople.

Replacement windows are a tangible product; you expect to get what you pay for, and not be forced into the purchase.

But fortune-tellers will now have to tell their clients: “This service is for entertainment only and not experimentally proven.” Which removes all the mystery and fun -- and leaves me wondering why anyone would pay for a reading.

The ‘entertainment’ itself is tied in with the idea that what we hear might be true. It is enticing because we’re not sure. If the reading starts with a disclaimer, then the snippets the fortune-teller does get right, will, instead of increasing our excitement, be perceived as a piece of guesswork. And that's boring!

I don’t see any harm in fortune telling. I have never heard of anyone who crossed a gypsy’s palm with silver, then made a life decision, or a financial investment, based on what was seen in the crystal ball. But perhaps they do, and in sufficient numbers to require a change in the law.


It seems more that the bureaucrats aim to wipe the world down with a clean, damp cloth. Then smooth out the creases to achieve a bland, homogenized whole.

But I must protest: Freedom for fortune-tellers!

Spooky!

From last Friday until this morning, my high-speed Internet connection was travelling at a snail’s pace. Which I calculate as seven-times slower than dial-up!

According to my ISP, there were no problems with the service. So I assume this must have been another manifestation of life in a haunted house.


I moved here in August 2006. And the first ghost I saw was a little girl, about 8-years-old, peering at me through the wrought iron gate of the walled garden. That first summer and autumn, I saw her several times. She always took a quick peek at me from exactly the same spot. She had short, mousy-blonde hair and wore a red sweater. I liked her, and was quite happy that she enjoyed playing in my secret garden.

I’d lived here for about two months, when I awoke one night to see what I thought was my maternal grandmother standing in my bedroom. She wore a dark-beige cardigan and jeans, and her wooden walking stick looked freshly polished. Just like the little girl, she looked straight at me.

But my grandmother NEVER wore jeans. She wore a dress and hat until the day she died. (I have her mink hat in a cupboard in my office.)

Though I wasn’t particularly interested in the history of the house, it has been thrust upon me. The old man who delivers the free local newspaper lived here until the mid 1970s.

One day, a late-middle-aged man was jogging along the pavement, and stopped me as I headed towards the car. He told me he was born in this house, in what is now my bedroom. He told me about the number of deaths of men from this street, and the impression that made on his uncle, who, as a child, lived here during the First World War. At one point, only two of the sixty houses did not have a black ribbon on the door.

He told me about the family who lived next door, and how his grandmother helped nurse their children before the youngest daughter died of TB. The land that is now my walled garden was part of a communal clothes-drying area … where the little girl loved to play.

Quiet Village

I tend to be prematurely over-enthusiastic about the arrival of summer. So I was horrified when I woke up this morning feeling cold. After a handful of sunny days, I had completely forgotten it’s only mid May and therefore, technically, spring. Luckily, the sunshine returned mid morning, and all is well. :)

Good news, considering I’ve already found my summer soundtrack: Silent Movie by Quiet Village.

On hearing the opening track for the first time, you could be forgiven for expecting something cheesy. It's the type of album to listen to in its entirety -- though I already have my favourite tracks, and imagine some will receive plenty of airplay.

With its eclectic influences, including Italian film soundtracks, BBC library music, disco edits, acid rock, vintage soul and easy listening, Silent Movie, while classified as electronica, is unique, and not easy to describe. The past that sounds like the future...? Perhaps it's more a slightly surreal dream...

And now for the geeky part:

Joel Martin and Matt Edwards, AKA Quiet Village, borrowed the name from an exotica masterpiece by Martin Denny.

In this clip from the late 1950s, Martin Denny and his group perform Quiet Village, al fresco; on the TV show Hawaii Calls.

Summer sounds. I hope you enjoy!

Stressed Seaweed

It is a hot summer’s day; there’s not a cloud in the sky. You, and your friends or family, make the decision to go to the beach.

As you run through the house, gathering flip-flops and towels and swimsuits, you imagine warm sand, blue-green water, a slight breeze.

You put on your sunglasses, get into a boiling hot car, and roll down the windows. Then you drive through sunny countryside, the wind in your hair. When you near the coast and smell the scent of the sea, your heart jumps with excitement.

Now the air is cooler, the sky less bright. But those clouds will quickly blow over! You roll up the windows. The weather is dull, but perhaps … the sunny spot is a mile along the coast.

The clouds are darker. You put on a jacket before stepping out of the car. Thank goodness you had the foresight to bring one! You walk along a path through the sand dunes, and look at the sea. “I’m freezing,” says one of your friends.

“Me, too,” says another. “I saw a café, two or three miles back. It looked like it might have views of the harbour.”

You’re a hundred yards from the car when a hailstorm starts. Your hair is wet and your legs are covered in goose bumps.

The café that might have views of the harbour looks empty and sad. You keep driving.

Ten miles from home you take off your jacket, then roll down the windows. The warm wind dries your hair. You, and your friends or family, spend the late afternoon sunbathing in your garden.

Why does this happen?

It is the fault of brown seaweed, otherwise known as kelp. Scientists believe stress among the plants can alter weather patterns.

On an overcast day kelp are comfortable when the tide goes out, as they stay damp until it comes in again. But on a bright day they dry, releasing iodide. The iodide rises, causing clouds to form overhead, sheltering the kelp from the unwelcome sunshine.

Amazing!

Never, ever, expect a sunny day at a beach where kelp is found in quantity.