Bryan Islip's Blog, page 45

April 1 - a crowded day.

It's now five thirty p.m. and outside there's a gale of wind and rain. It has been building up all day long and now the loch is three parts grey and one part white and the trees in our garden are tossing their heads, bent low, distorted through window panes running with rivulets of water.

Quite a wild day in other ways as well. Last evening two pairs of folk from Israel turned up looking for accomodation. They wanted a deal but Dee politely told them 'no deal, but welcome at the correct prices.' So they went off presumably to find a better bargain but were soon back and we got on famously thereafter. In fact they bought one of my large prints and were exeedingly complimentary about theiir stay. As soon as they had driven off up the rain-swept road two of our friends from 'down south' arrived. They used to live here but decided Wester-Ross was not really for them, so it was good to compare notes.

Earlier this morning I had occasion to visit the doctor about a persistent lesion of one kind or another on the thumb of my right hand. He number the offended digit before incising away a small section for biopsy analysis. Ouch! Bowen's disease, he thinks it is. I asked if this was a rarity (I've never heard of it) and if so would we be making the pages of The Lancet? No to both questions. We shall see... I told the doctor that as my life consists largely of painting with pastels and pounding away on the keys of my computer, losing the use of a thumb would be pretty devastating. He laughed. That's good.

Today being the first of April my short story 'Smile Samantha Smile' is broadcast to subscribers. You might think it appropriate for April Fools Day. Have a fifteen minute free read via www.bryanislipauthor.com should you not already be a subscriber.

I can see a seagull pipping and slip-sliding across the winds. How supremely well he or she uses the force of nature. One minute up high the next skimming the waves. This is the pure face of joy. For him or her there is nothing in this world he or she cannot face down.

Smile

Samantha Somers is a nicely proportioned, fortyish TV weather lady. She is much loved by her audience, (especially the male contingent) and not least because she often tries to alleviate the bad weather news with the odd joke. However she has a problem  ... of course she does, all my viewpoint short story characters start off with a problem. What they then try to do about it is the story.  

Smile Samatha Smile is the title of my April 1st 'short story of the month. I hope it might make you smile, too. Interested? See www.bryanislipauthor.com and click on the short story of the month. You'll receive Smile Samatha Smile and a brand new ten minute read on the first day of every month for the rest of 2011.

Meantime, the visitor season here is off to a good start. I've just installed a rather splendid 'storyboard' in the Mellon Charles Image Studio (allied to The Perfume Studio, previous owners George and Liz having sold out to Adrian and Katie Hollister). This board tells the story of how my landscape pastels emerge and are reformed into cards, prints etc. But the Image Studio overall is a brilliant concept aimed at those with a camera and the eye for photography. Most of the visitors up here, I would imagine. I've not seen anything like it and we wich Adrian and Katoe all success.

White waters of the Blackwater River

Here's my latest painting - a pastel sized c. 44 x 32 cm. And the corresponding verse .... it's for sale, folks!


Blackwater
White waters round great boulders music make,stones cracked an age ago from mother rockbefore men's feet first trod these highland ways,before he felt the need this bridge to build or to Blackwater's mighty salmon thrilled
This river is a passageway for dreamswild nature left unto itself it seems;here kings and queens must breast its torrent fall,must fight and win against the waters' brawlbecause for salmon life and love is all.
I sit here, fascinated, for an hourastonished by all beauty, all its power.
Bryan IslipMarch 2011

Dee and deer through a glass, darkly

Up early this morning - even earlier in view of all the UK clocks going forward an hour. We have B&B guests at the moment and Dee always is up and around by six at the latest. I tell her these breakfasts are not Masterchef but she takes no notice and in truth the breakfasts actually are (Masterchef standard)!

She calls me into the kitchen; 'Quick, come here quietly,' she says. 'Just look at this.'

Crouch down so they won't see you through the window. They are these twelve red deer in the unkempt field beyond our back garden. I took a photo but a combination of weak light and window glass obscured by the winter weather ... still, you get the picture.

Truth is beauty: beauty is truth

When you write fiction it has to be the truth. That sounds like a classic paradox but it is not. I don't mean the story has to be an account of what actually happened at sometime to someone or some people. I mean, when the writer has put a realistically fictional character or characters into a realistically fictional made up situation, the character or characters have to behave, by which I mean respond, exactly as he or she or they could have done were they real. All fiction is worthwhile only in so far as it does this. Such behaviour (response) of course need not be the obvious or the logical. For better or worse we are all subject to our own special inbuilt eccentricities - and it is this, as a fact, that actually involves us as readers. We want to know, for better or for worse, how X got himself / herself out or it or not as the case may be, and this cannot be faked if the work is to be any good. If the guy is a bit of a bastard sometimes he has to behave as a bastard, whether or not he, our central character, disappoints us in the process. We cheer if he prevails / overcomes and we forgive him and want to cry about it if he fails because we all know his fallibility as well as we know our own carefully concealed fallibilities. And anyway we all know that shit happens.

Ernest Hemingway's letters often compare writing to fighting (boxing). He saw that there is no place to hide in the ring. It is all there for us to see. It is the naked, often bloody truth. The following passage comes from my award winning story Speaking of Champions, first published November last in my anthology of short fiction called Twenty Bites ... The viewpoint character is a lady lying paralysed and incommunicado, the victim of her illness but with mind intact and still in possession of her wonderful gift of total recall  ... once upon a time she had been a schoolteacher and wannabe writer, herself  ...

She scans the hard drive, stops it at that sixth form, remembers the special one with Janine Stone. She looks along the seven rows of faces. All different, all lovely with their looked after young lady hair stylings, some of them very pretty, some not, but each of them beautiful. And each one of them intent. Looking, watching, waiting for her, expecting the daily demonstration of their teacher's famous total recall.

"All right, ladies, this is Virginia Woolf being Clarissa, that's Mrs Dalloway. Clarissa is here thinking of her home city of London. Are you ready?" Without reference to any printed page she begins the lengthy quotation about the hush then Big Ben striking the hour, irrevocable, and about leaden circles dissolving in the air, about what was there in people's eyes, the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle…She takes another breath, hears a small cough, 'Miss?'

Janine, the little red head in the front row. 'Yes, Janine, you'd like to comment?'

'Well, Mrs Morajani, I think that was beautiful, but I think your writing's just as good.' The sudden pale-skin blush.

You smile for the girl. 'Oh, I don't think you should compare my efforts with those of Virginia Woolf, Janine.' Giggles in the classroom. Vision of Miss Woolf walking into the river, pockets of her drape-styled coat weighed down with rocks, the darkening of the day as the waters of the Ouse close over her head. 'Girls. The wonderful thing is this: that we, all of us, we know what's wonderful! And do remember this, Janine, creative art is not some kind of a competition.'

But Janine again, challenging, questioning, impressing herself as usual on her teacher and the rest of her class; "Yes, But when we did Hemingway, he wrote in one of his letters to William Faulkner that writing's like fighting, didn't he? He said there are losers and winners. He said, 'Dr Tolstoi and Mr Dostoevsky were both better than both of us'. He said that, 'Shakespeare was the all time champion,' didn't he?'

Truth is beauty. Beauty is truth.

Digging for words

Where does that story come from? That is a question I'm often asked, the implication being that it must have its foundation in something or someone known to me in real life. Not so. I've just finished Steven Kings autobio/manual 'On Writing' (very well worth the read) and in it he says its like mining. You know there's something down there so you just have to dig - very carefully - in order to bring it up into the light of day.

Of course it's this 'knowing there's something down there' that is the raw beginnings of a tale. As I've blogged in the past, it could be an object or an incident or sometimes a person's behaviour that fires the urge to dig for those of us who are on the lookout for this mother lode. It's true that for most writers, especially those new to the practice of fiction, the incident or whatever may come from within, but I can honestly say that none or my characters and none of my story lines have come intact - at least to the best of my knowledge - from within myself or my experience. I can also honestly say that all of my stories must be an amalgam of the many thousands of things, people, places that have been taken into my sub consciousness over the 76 years of my life.

All my stories are told through the viewpoint of a single strong character. I don't do the god-like thing of telling you the tale through the minds of two or more people. This is because I want you to forget about me and think only of the viewpoint character when you read my stuff. I want you to identify with a crippled soldier who is trying to conquer a mountain unaided or a middle aged lady dog lover whose life is shot away or a businessman caught up in an alien system or, (my April 1 story of the month), an attractive lady weather forecaster threatened with the bullet.

Right now I'm writing three short stories and a novel. What about? A young black boxer who has had enough of wrecking himself and his opponents; a man who meets with a big big problem whilst on a narrow boat holiday; a twelve years old boy on his first solo excursion away from his troubled home, and a young woman of mixed race who wants to beat the boys as a professional cue-games player. I don't know where these nuggets (Steven King's word for it) came from but I do know what made me start to dig down for them.

Penguin and Amazon

You know the old question, 'If you only had one xxxx to drink / go to / listen to / or etc for the rest of your life what would it be?' Well, if I only had one activity to undertake for the rest of my life it would be the writing of fiction, and this morning came a great big morale boost on this novel-writing front.

The mighty Amazon (web-site not river) and the mighty Penguin (publisher not emperor) every year combine forces to find their best new novelist. Big dollar prize, big publishing contract. No, it isn't me - not yet anyway!  Entries are restricted to the first five thousand, each of whom have to submit in January a 300 word 'pitch' for their novel plus a first 5000 word extract plus the whole typescript, bio etc. The 300 word pitch eliminates 4000 of the 5000. In February I was included in the 1000 left standing. The 5000 word extract is then read and eliminates a further 750 of the 1000. Yesterday I was included in the 250 'quarter-finalists'. Now my whole book - actually my first novel More Deaths Than One - will be read in full along with the other 249 and the best judged 50 will become semi-finalists. I dare not look beyond that, but to get this far is for me a major boost. April 22 is when I get to hear whether or not I am still in the running so in the meantime am doing my well practiced best not to get too excited or too, too over-hopeful.

Cross your fingers for me. Please!

Something new every day

If perchance you've been wondering where I've got to, don't! This time of the year is always a big build up of all those pre-season tasks that have been piling up in the 'won't take long' file. Starting in on them invariably does take long. But the fact is that I really like writing up this diary of mine and, even though it returns not one penny piece, I do try to prioritise it. My long ago school report too often said, 'Bryan must try harder', and I will. Promise.

Current activities include a new pastel painting - the Blackwater river at Little Garve. This is a real Highland torrent rushing whitely through its split stone, densely wooded gorge. About half done.

On the writing front my short story of the month for April goes out in a few days time. It's called Smile Samantha Smile and that's all I'll say about it in advance. I am producing (that is, printing on real paper) all these 2000 word stories in the form of A5 booklets. I have encountered a lot of interest in this from hotels and the more upmarket cafes. Right now I do not charge for them because they are intended as (a possibly unique) direct marketing tool for my books. We shall see.

Next week sees our first craft market of the year at Poolewe Hall. Be good to see our trade friends again after a long winter hibernation. Most of our products are ready but not so the 2012 calendar, which this year will be special - dare I say quite unique.

And then of course there's Dee's B&B. She already has a number of bookings and is putting the finishing touches to her rooms, offerings etc. It is a lot of hard work for the lady but we really look forward to meeting guests repeat and first time - and of course the income is most welcome as well!

See you soon

Bryan

Grumpy old men and tsunamis

How do you feel when you wake to greet another day? Any different this morning to, say, ten years ago, or fifty? To answer my own questions, most of the time I feel pretty good. Eyes open - feet on carpet - kettle on - open curtains to look out on the world sort of thing. Blinking sleep from eyes, with a growing sense of excitement I can sense the true potential, for me, in the day ahead. 

Trouble is, one minute's exposure to the TV news changes the mood. I don't know if I've turned into a grumpy old man. To be frank I refuse to worry about it for I am, as they say, what I am, which is what my ancestry and my own life experience have made of me. As with you. And personally, I do not do very much by way of navel gazing.

But I find myself becoming more and more critical of most of the media and of all advertising (heavily linked), because a predominance of that which the BBC calls 'news' is not news at all. It's the media man's / woman's opinion about things either inconsequentially 'celebrity' or inconsequentially 'political'. You know the sort of thing: man in raincoat under umberella stands on the green outside the Houses of Parliament and tells us that some grade four celebrity in there is rumoured to have used our taxes to buy a duckhouse. Really? Show me a businessman or a media man who would claim innocence on the expenses front under a lie detector test. Please. Folk who live in glass houses / houses of parliament should not throw stones and if they do, who has ever cared unless the stones hit them.

Occasionally there's a real story. I do not here refer to day twentyseven of a squabble over who runs some tinpot state in the Middle east, I mean the threat of a nuclear explosion following an undersea earthquake. Suddenly our publicly owned news channel is despatching their boys and girls half way around the world in waves almost as significant as the tsunami on which they are reporting. The pictures are shown again and again accompanied by carefully modulated estimates of numbers dead. It's a kind of sponsored voyeurism. Serried ranks of nuclear energy 'experts' rally to the cause - the cause being that nuclear generated energy is not only good, not only essential but essentially safe. I have not seen a single opponent of that view since Thursday even though every single viewer must be wondering whether he/she wants his/her money to be spent on buiding plants that could ....

Of course not! If we cannot satisfy our needs for such nonsenses as street lighting and refrigeration and central heating in cold countries and criss-crossing whole segments of populations meaninglessly around the globe without the life threatening engineering of atoms we should bloody well learn to need less power. Easy.

Yes, the reason for we old men being grumpy is simple. As you near the end of your span you know damn well what really needed and still needs to be done in favour of a future for this marvellous species and its habitat - and you know damn well that you, personally, did not even try to do it. Worst of all, with escalating certainty you can see that so pitifully few are trying to stem today's oncoming tsunami.

The quality of mercy

Apropos of nothing at all, I was idling through the hundreds of poems I've written and stowed away unread over these many years when I came across this one. At age 63 I'd suffered a sudden, exquisite pain in the abdomen region and had, for the first time in my life, to be rushed into a Winchester hospital.

The 'she who had no need to care' was the young doctor who spotted yellowing of face and promoted me in the queue to emergency status. This was for her ...


Thoughts from Twyford Ward at Christmas  When you are told, undress, it's just as if, Unprotesting you are taking off your self; Abed you soon become that bed, your clothes,Your self together folded on the shelf;You think at first that hospitals are blindTo 'ought but sickness, know you just from charts That hang upon the footrail of your bed,You're just the sum of your defective parts,And yet compassion is a river deep That under-runs the vastness of this place, I instance she who had no need to careWhose caring vastly aided my repair.
Christmas watching David Copperfield In this my only hospital (so far!)With time and space enough to yield to Dickens' tale and the progress of my starAbove the sixty three high Christmas tides,Whose flows and ebbs way-mark my life:Is it my sense of cosy helplessnessOr Davey's in the end successful strifeThat spurs my deepest thoughts and questions?Or festive signs that sparkle everywhereHere in this warm retreat from cold realityWhere sometime pain's the only penalty?
Or the unsmiling ancient over thereFor whom the bright-lit glory of this worldHas long since darkened, shrunk inside to shareThe bony cage, the pain-wracked bounds of self Alone, most trace of grace now gone and nowWho pleads to be let home for Christmas DayAnd gives his faltering word, his heart-felt vow He would return that eve, come yet what may…Might I have seen my Christmas future thereIn breathless rattling chest, bent form, not leastOf the indignities great age can bringTo those who to a kind of living cling?
Or the tableau played between the oldSicilian and the smart young nurse who needs Through kindly firmness to impose her will And not accept her rebel patient's leads,He with his 'bloody 'ells', his loud guffawsAnd she with sternly issued reprimandsIn words he does not wish to comprehend'Til she can do no more than raise her hands,Give in and shake her shining soft black hair And grin - now see how keenly those old eyesLook for that spark that lives within a smileAnd which can still the stuff of life ignite In an exhausted frame, a care-worn browEnclosing sleeping memories, woken now…
…That laughing girl with basket on brown arm…Bright curls her head-scarf failed to tie withinHot growing earth smell of that hillside's warmEmbrace, soft touch of her sweat-beaded skin,The bold sun-colours of that olive grove When he, somebody, was a man of pride, His lifted heart so strong, so bound in loveThat what he wished to take was not denied And he had made a present of himself,Of moon and stars to such a one as this…
But most is peaceful here on earth tonightAs I and my thrombotic new-found pal Range in our conversation left and rightLike why are there no sick wild animalsJust healthy ones and those that soon by dintOf age or violence careful nature culls:And have we maybe just lost sight of whyMan must at all costs nature over-ruleNo longer seeking reason nor for rhyme?This day it seems that living counts the leastAnd pride and purpose are what count the mostTo this we raise our glasses, drink our toast.
Oh silent night of good king WenceslasNow hark the herald angels sing out loudAs here in Twyford Ward the choir en masseDelivers Christmas carols, cheerful crowd,To patients come in fear, in helpless search Of help, distressed, and of an end to pain -And hope, as they who issue from the church, To go in thoughtfulness as born again;And maybe nurse and doctor, orderly Attending to the sick this Christmas dayAre closest to that Christ-child's glad re-birth;To glory in the highest, peace on earth.

Bryan IslipChristmas 97