Warning: Another lizardy-thing

This jumped out in front of me yesterday - nearly giving me a heart attack. I thought in that first second it was a snake. I'm not scared of snakes as a species but it strikes me as jolly sensible to avoid something that's poisonous or liable to squeeze me to death. Anyway, once I'd established it was marginally more scared of me than I was of it... I took some photos.

Since I haven't bought my reference book yet, Boonsong can you help identify this one please?

I spent the rest of the day jumping at leaves brushing my shoulders and frogs smaller than my thumbnail jumping in the dark. What a wuss.

Ka-plunk and Ka-pow

A couple of days ago I had my first Thai massage…ever. It was sort of by accident.

For those that don’t know a Thai massage is different from an oil massage and it’s because of this distinction that I’ve always done my best to avoid them. In Thai massage the person giving the massage moves your body around into different poses and exerts pressure or pulls muscles or pushes their elbows, finger into your muscles; hell, they may even walk on your back. You are stretched; your body might go ‘click’ and ‘clunk;’ it might hurt, it might be relaxing but it will probably be a mixture of both.

The reason that I have done my damnedest to avoid them is because of a seventeen-year relationship with physios, osteopaths and chiropractors. This connection began only a few months into my first pregnancy when my lower back went ‘kaplunk’ and produced all kinds of hideous pains. During pregnancy chemicals are sent around the body to loosen up joints, ligaments etc to facilitate birth. To someone with hyper mobile joints (me) this can be a problem: flibberty flobberty body parts (the technical term.) A physio at the maternity unit was my first port of call.

I love physios and osteopaths: I rate them highly. BUT, I’m nearly always in pain when I go to see them. So, I’m nervous of Thai massage on three counts: I associate being manipulated with said pain. Two, I’m afraid that they may not be as trained as they should be and what with my wibbly wobbly joints I might end up in pain after the session. And three I have an old shoulder injury and a present hip issue: Gosh, I really am a specimen of good health and fitness. Not.

So that’s how it came to be that Husband and I pottered up the road to a massage place (infinitely more affordable than in our hotel) for a Thai massage for him and foot massage for me. However because the foot massage only lasts for one hour she did a sort of Thai massage on me for the remaining thirty minutes.

I don’t think I can be an easy candidate for such things; I don’t switch off easily. I'm cautious that she’ll do something that will hurt and my brain goes careering off but that can be useful for all sorts of inspiration. But by the time I was turned over onto my back I’d totally lost the use of my arms and legs; they were leaden.

Pretty damn incredible it was.

Visitor

We have a little pet in our villa garden.

He (we'll assume) comes out to say hello whenever we get back to our villa or go out into the garden. He appears on the other side of the window to watch me write. He is very tolerant of my camera, posing for long periods until one of us gets bored.

I've labelled his picture 'lizardy thing' but does anyone know what he is? Iguana? Chameleon? I must need a new reference book.

The Green Tinged Witch from Wicked

I’ve seen a lot of dawn hours this week. I’ve lain in our gorgeous, palatial holiday bed, looking up at the fairy tale mosquito net thinking bad thoughts. I am not a good person without my sleep. It was unfair that my family should have to bring that woman on holiday. I stared long into the night at the green tinge cast by the air con control unit, cussing and thinking murderous thoughts. Poor Husband; what a risk he takes in sleeping next to me.

I thought I’d done really well with the jetlag the weekend I got back. My only remedy for this evil condition is to keep busy so I should have known that going on holiday immediately wouldn’t be good for it.

And it really wasn’t.

On Monday night and Tuesday night I spent three hours gazing around the villa. Wednesday night between midnight and three am I also endured a migraine. Eventually tormented by the smell of the mosquito netting (don’t ask, a hyper sensitive sense of smell appears to be something to do with migraine) I got up, paced about and then settled on a chair. Draped in a towel and a pink pashmina for warmth, I spent five hours blissfully asleep.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Sorry that it’s been so quiet here.

When I got back to Bangkok I had a friend to stay. She’d been working in Phuket for a month and came up to see us before transferring to Bali to meet her family. She was the very first person I called after Husband dropped me the ‘I’ve been offered a promotion in Bangkok’ bombshell. She was (and continues to be) a source of great wisdom about expat life. I met her at our kids’ primary school when she returned from many years living in SE Asia and we’ve been trying and failing to meet up in Bangkok since we got here.

As she made her way to Bali, so we were on our way to Koh Samui.

That’s where we are now. Husband’s colleague said ‘Two weeks in Samui? OMG; you’ll be so bored.” But we wanted a do nothing holiday… I’ve got ten books to read and my own novel to re-write. How can I get bored?

I had planned to pelt through my reading list but the mood took me to start rewriting so that’s what I’m doing in the mornings and reading with whatever time is left over. So far I’ve enjoyed reading/am reading:

• Dad's Life by Dave Hill

• Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

• Turning The Tide by Christine Stovell

And I’m 9% through reordering my manuscript. Happily, there isn’t nearly as much mess as I’d anticipated.

‘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.