Made to measure views

So I promised photos of the apartment some time ago. This isn't quite photos of the whole place but here's my office. It's alright, isn't it?

But yes, that is a brick wall I look out on.

Back in the summer, before I'd even seen our new apartment, I was at an Arvon course outside Inverness - at Moniack Mhor. This was the view from my window. I made a joke that I wanted to paste the view up on my window when I got to Bangkok. Ha; I had no idea that unless I wanted to look out on concrete I REALLY would need to stick up a picture.

All I needed to do was blow up my digital image onto really large photo paper and I could have Scotland outside my window. Voila:

Then I got to thinking.... I could do a few - dependent on my mood. It's a sunflowers in Lopburi kind of day today:

Tomorrow I might be homesick. Let's have Kent in July:

How about back to Asia? How about Kuala Lumpur at night:

Oh HOW much fun can we have here? Hastings beach anyone? With killer seagull...

Right; okay. I think it's time to go back to work now. Head down...

‘Stick to the roads; steer clear of the moors.’ Part Two

I was led to believe that Moniack Mhor would be basic but comfortable. I found it considerably more than basic and every bit as comfortable. It used to be a farm stead but to me the stone walls, dark wood floors combined with an arched mirror brought simple chapels to mind. Maybe it was the passion for writing and reading that I found inside. It was filled with books and posters and had soft, comfortable sofas where the attendees accumulated during the first afternoon over mugs of tea and glasses of wine.

These first hours are always a little odd. We went round and around our incomplete group checking out each other’s names. 

Gillian Philip and Erica Munro, our tutors, both local (ish) arrived to join us. The Director of Moniack Mhor gave us a talk on the building and the ethos of Arvon in so far as it affected us. Students are expected to cook (in teams of four) one evening meal during their stay. The menu and all ingredients are provided. Lunches and breakfasts are on a ‘help yourself’ arrangement, which means there is also a ‘tidy up after yourself’ deal. There are always people who do more than their share, as well as those who do less than their share. I suspect this can be a source of tension in some groups.

Classes were held in the morning and one-to-one sessions in the afternoon. Every evening something was planned, usually readings: our own work, an author’s work we admire, our tutors’ work etc. On the Wednesday night we had a visit from literary agent Geraldine Cooke.

My aim for the week was to dive into my manuscript and work out the new and improved structure; what needs to go where to tell the best story? I didn’t exactly achieve that but did accomplish something else. Back in March of this year I couldn’t see how to edit or what to cut but now I can. I’ve lost the fear for the mess that will ensue once I start moving bits of story around. And I got some faith back – this might sound mad – I believe that I will know in spite of the muddle what needs to be moved. I believe in my intuition again. I have it; I just need to listen.

There are so many wonderful things about Arvon courses: the dedicated time to write, to think about writing, to spend time with other writers and the experts – the tutors and the guests – who will answer all those questions that you have but haven’t known who to ask.

I’ve come away determined. I’m going to finish my novel and start subbing it to agents. I’ve got an idea for a radio play and I’m going to prepare and sub an idea for a non-fiction book I’ve been contemplating for several years.

‘Stick to the roads; steer clear of the moors.’

I’ve always wanted to do an Arvon writing course but every time I looked at their website, the courses were often already full. Attendees go back again and again which says it all, doesn’t it?

You can go to a taught course or a retreat – tutored or untutored - at one of four centres in the UK: Yorkshire, Shropshire, Devon and Inverness. In the interest of research I have plans to go to each one now, oh yes I do. (If you can’t afford a course you can apply for assistance. This isn’t something they say and then don’t follow through on; they absolutely do put their money where their mouths are –you can find out how at their website.)

This year I got my act together and booked a course, Writing Mainstream, at Moniack Mhor, near Inverness in Scotland. I was almost more excited by the sleeper train I’d booked than the course. In my head I appeared in a tailored, post war suit talking in the clipped English tones of the 1950s. Pigments faded into black and white… a dark handsome stranger emerged to help me with something I’d got in my eye. Ahhh, shades of Brief Encounter… but no, it wasn’t quite like that.

The sleeper cabin was wee, as I’d imagined they’d say in Scotland and sadly there was no sign anywhere of a stranger. A strapping lass going home to Inverness had booked the top bunk. I woke around thirty-four times in the night at the strange swaying motion and morning tea appeared in a paper cup and not bone china stamped with the Orient Express; hmmm, I was getting my media metaphors mixed…  But it was all compensated for by the remote and hilly landscape I saw when I nipped out of the cabin first thing; it couldn't have been more different from Bangkok.

I couldn’t arrive at Moniack Mhor until the afternoon so I dumped my bags at left luggage and after a quick look at the town I went around the corner to spend the day at Inverness library. I left around 4pm to get a taxi from the station. I gave him the address.

‘Are you going to the writers’ place?’

He went off to check with his colleague how to find it and so began our wild goose chase. Some miles outside Inverness, we went up lanes, through tracks and tiny roads with passing points. The taxi man stopped and made ‘phone calls to the centre while I admired the views of vast open countryside and then we’d set off again following our new instructions. A man with a dog set us on the right route eventually but we drove mile after mile where it should only have been a few.  A car coming in the opposite direction slowed, stopping level with our window and my hopes soared for a local who’d spotted us driving in circles.

‘Excuse me,’ the woman said, ‘I wonder if you can help me. My sat nav isn’t finding my destination. I’m trying to find Moniack Mhor…’

This was the first sighting of one of my writing peers; that afternoon and evening the other thirteen assembled…

To be continued.

View for a view

I'd never lived in a city until I came to Bangkok. I lived for about ten months in London but it doesn't feel as though that counts for anything any more.

I love living in a city because it's so different from my natural habitat and I know it won't be forever. But. Sometimes I feel I might go mad if I don't get away from the concrete.

(You can see examples of views from our apartment in Bangkok here and here.)

When I arrived for my week at Arvon Foundation's Moniack Mhor I worried I might spend all my time looking out of the windows.

I did do a lot.

But OMG, just look:

(It's very badly pasted together by me in Photoshop but I think you get the idea.)

Planes, trains & Automobiles

I have an appalling reputation among some friends when it comes to train travel. I might look like I know what I’m doing, what with the back and forth air travel to Bangkok, but as they informed me, airlines go to some length to make sure I don’t climb aboard the wrong 747. One friend flatly refuses to catch a train with me ever again in case we end up in Scotland like we nearly did last time (twice in one weekend) when we were trying to get to Derby and then back to London.

But I am in the UK and I have to get around and without a car it has to be train travel. I confess I’m fast losing my confidence with British trains and I’d already had one dicey trip earlier this month. (And it was The Friends who don’t trust my ability to get on the right train.) The one I was on split in two before my destination. If you wanted one route you needed the first four carriages; if you wanted the other terminal, you took one of the back four. Except being unfamiliar with the line I didn’t know which branch my stop was on. As it was after a few minutes private panicking I asked someone and then breezed off the train like the experienced international traveler that I’m not.

Anyway the next hurdle was getting to my Arvon holiday. At least this time I wanted to go to Scotland. I arrived in plenty of time at Euston; so early in fact that there wasn’t a single sign on the information board of any train going to Scotland. I’d been having delusions of my sleeper being in black and white and having a Brief Encounter type of experience for days and I think it must’ve clouded my judgement. This time in my panic I thought I’d got the wrong London station and honestly I was too embarrassed to go to the enquiry desk in case they identified me for the cretin I am and I phoned the rail enquiry people so I couldn't see their look of pity. (I was at the right station all along but just SO early that my sleeper train hadn’t appeared on the board yet.)

And honestly, it’s never ending because then I had to negotiate the return journey.

Four of us left Moniack Mhor at an unholy hour on Saturday morning all because of my early flight to Birmingham. The worst thing is that I didn't even want to go to bloomin’ Birmingham but getting the flight to Manchester would've meant getting up before I'd gone to bed so I booked the more reasonable flight and planned to take a train to Manchester. I'd be at my friends’ for lunch.

The last night at Moniack Mhor was a jolly affair and it's possible I got my quantities of sleep and wine a bit confused. When I arrived at Inverness Airport and looked at the departures board I saw my flight was delayed by three hours. I'll spare you the step by step but four further delays ensued and in the end I spent eight hours enjoying the delights of Inverness Airport: D'lish, (which really wasn't) WH Smiths and a Starbucks with no squashy seat to doze in.

The only good thing to happen in my day of travelling was that I arrived at Birmingham just in time for the direct hourly train to Manchester. It was the rather ominously named 'cross country' service. I took this to mean we'd have a lovely windy tour of the central section of England. I did eventually arrive but not even in time for dinner.

My kids who are suddenly able to get themselves (more successfully than I it transpires) around the country on public transport, had arrived perfectly.

I think I might have to start following them from now on.