Kerry Hudson's Blog, page 9

Receipe for happiness: One apple, one parade, one beautiful county

Like Alice trough the looking glass I spend much of my time thinking ‘curiouser and curiouser’. Although I right now I’m cosied in bed drinking pineapple juice, I wrote this post in the basement of a huge gleaming skyscraper (The Twin K Towers) having a peanut butter milkshake, listening to this and watching a teenage boy the size of a mountain Sumo Wrestle a little whippet thin one on cable.

Yesterday, at breakfast with lovely fellow writer Tim Bowler, we mostly spoke about how incredibly kind, generous, calm and gentle everyone we have met here is. It is true. Even in the most hospitable countries I’ve travelled in (and Russia, with a few exceptions I’m not looking at you here) there’s been an occasional arsehole that would leave you with a bit of a bad taste in our mouth. But here there’s no such thing, at least not so far. For that reason (if not the jetlag) it’s a very restful place to spend time. I wonder if the implications of losing face, or causing anyone else to lose face, means everyone is trying to make everything workable for everyone else. Whatever, it works for me. Take yesterday, after visiting a beautiful temple, I asked if I could take a picture of this truck filled with apples. The next moment there was a big, glossy sweet apple in my hand, hand shined with by one of the men. A stranger is given an apple in a foreign land…it felt fairytale-ish.

I realise had no expectations in coming here. I only wanted to to have an adventure, to meet other writers and gather some material for myself. But I also knew that potentially things might happen on this sort of trip that don’t happen when you’re travelling along (as happened on a British Council visit to Poland last year or at the Festival du Premier earlier this year).

Thursday was the sort of day that I don’t think would have happened under any circumstances. We all left Seoul in a mini-bus bound for Gongju (a small town and once the former capital of one of the ‘Three Kingdoms’) in the morning with it feeling a bit like a school trip. I want to tell you what the landscape was like but I took a horse-tranquilliser travel-sickness pill and so slept the whole way, waking only for the Services where I watched some waffles the shape of walnuts being made, petted a very tiny, very white dog wearing a pink sparkly hairclip and panic ate an entire box of chocolate covered almonds.

When we arrived we all went for lunch in a Hanok (traditional wooden houses with peaked roofs and underfloor heating (I’ll be staying in one next week)) Village. As ever the food was delicious: kimchi, acorn jelly, squid, pork belly, pancakes, mince patties. And so we went off to our venue with full bellies. This event was run by the British Council as part of a Cultural Festival that Gongju was holding. Myself, Tim, Julia and the internationally acclaimed Korean writer Sun-Mi Hwang were to do a short reading and talk to 140 people (mostly, I found out, teens…cue manic revision of my cunting and shitting). After my Wednesday event I was a little nervous but with simultaneous translation (including earpiece UN style), lessons learned about slowing down and the enjoyment of an engaged audience it was a great event. I spoke about writing from life, how it changed my life and changed the way I live my life too.

At the end of the talk a young girl came up to me, all sweet and skinny in glasses and plaid shirt and said ‘I want to be you when I grow up’. I told her I was sure she could be anything she wanted. Afterwards the gorgeous young folks of Gongju asked us for autographs and we had our photos taken with each and every one of them. I guess this is what Justin Beiber must feel like.

Anyway, next on the agenda was a surprise visit to the town’s parade that evening. On the bus to the parade I’d joked with Tim and Julia that I ardently hoped hat wearing would be involved in our participation. We were sat as guests of honour behind the ‘King and Queens’ of the parade and were given beautiful Korean robes to wear plus…A HAT. The Mayor of Gongju himself tied my hat on for me. Just call me Mystic Meg.

The parade was honestly one of the most joyful things I have ever seen: singers in ballgowns, prancing horses, fireworks and flames, drummers, ribbon dancers, people throwing clingfilm wrapped cucumbers into the crowd (…to celebrate the harvest). As the sun set behind the town we watched local children in animal masks and local teens in sharp suits dancing to Psy while he whole town, old and young, watched and clapped along. The whole thing made me so happy. And you can watch my clumsy camera work it here.

I’m spending a whole week there next week. Staying in those Hanoks, cycling around, getting to know everyone there…the kids from my talk have promised to wave to me when they see me on my bicycle. I’m visiting a primary school and I’ll be doing some writing about the small Korean town that has already brought me so much pleasure.

I slept all the way back to Seoul, still wearing my silken robes, smiling the smile of a small child after a night at the fair.

Today we go to Paju Booksori where I’m doing a scene from the Tony Hogan Show (heavily un-Scottished and de-sweared for the teen audience). I rehearsed all of yesterday in my hotel room (my neighbours must think I’m a nutter). So, wish me luck! And lets hope the auld red-balloon of joyfulness stays high in the sunny, blue Seoul sky for it…  

**************************************************************************************

Also, please votevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVOTE for Tony Hogan to win Best Book in the Scottish Book Awards - thanks you beautiful stranger.

Do I make myself understood?

Ah jeysus! I just wrote a long post and lost it when my battery cut out. So instead you’re going to get…whatever this will be. After three nights of sleeping only six hours, I’m…a wee bit depleted to be honest though still so grateful to be here. So I’m watching shit American cable and, after this, I’m going to go downstairs to the 7/11 and get an ice-cream. I really (really) want a beer but I’ve still to practice for tomorrow’s talk in Gongju.

Tonight was a talk with about eighty adult students (and one adoreabubble little boy) at the British Council. I talked about how my background informed the book, my journey to a book deal and read some passages. I’ve done a variation of this a ton in London but I was naive to think that it would be transferable. I hadn’t even thought about how hard it would be to do a talk and worry about how that’s translating. I am sure I talk too fast. I laugh too much. I think I probably seem too eccentric with my lame jokes and funny voices and weird sayings like ‘I write with my guts’ (I mean, how does that even translate?). 

So even though everyone laughed and smiled. And I posed for pictures and signed the wee boys colouring in book (he was so cute - he even asked a question during Q&A) and some women who’re trying to write and work full time told me they were inspired…well, I still don’t feel like I did a good enough job tonight. 

I think it is partly because I so want to do a good job for the British Council because I’m so grateful to them for this opportunity. The other reason is that I am just rough on myself sometimes. And sometimes this is a real asset (Tony Hogan wouldn’t be the book it is without that aspect of me) but sometimes, when you can do nothing to change things, it’s an absolute bastard. And the funny thing is when I’ve felt like this before about events that’s when I’been invited back, or asked to teach with the organisation or something - like a polar opposite of my impressions. I suspect that this roughness on self is quite common with writers…a constant running of a race, trying to go faster even when no one’s telling you to.. 

Anyway, tonight is not the night to over think - or indeed over talk. I’m tired and tomorrow we’re up early to travel to Gongju. Today so many lovely things happened: a butterfly on a sunny chrysanthemum, two old women having a right good laugh with each other, a loquacious torch salesman on the metro - that it seems a pity to write about these things. But then, some things aren’t all butterflies on sunny flowers and one of the points of daily posting is to capture the truth of this unique experience, both the highs and the times when you’re figuring stuff out.    

That said, I bet I remember this picture and not my over-tired worry in years to come. So here’s one of my memories for you…

 ***********************************************************************************

Also, if you haven’t already heard via the jungle drums (or my bloody incessant tweeting) I would really like your vote to help make Tony Hogan Scottish Book of the Year at the Scottish Book Awards. It takes a second and you can vote here. Ta muchly. 

VOTE and the Wham Bars are on me

This is it, people. The voting for Scottish Book of the Year is OPEN. I’m in the final (with the poetry, non-fiction and fiction titles - all of which look very good) to win £30,000 smackeroos. That’s right people, £30,000 hot little potatoes. Plus all the good old fashioned GLORY. Some of you will know I’ve been a bit of a bridesmaid to the glory this year…

votevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevote

And I know it’s uncouth to look like I care about these things. And I want to play it cool and make a joke about how much toast and how many pairs of pajamas that prize money would enable. And while this is true (so much toast) what is even truer is that it will give me freedom to write, to keep writing and hopefully keep getting better. It would be my prize fund room with a view.

Voting takes 23.1 seconds (I timed it) and all you need to do is tick a box. You should. If you would like to I mean. Jesus, it is awkward asking people to do something for you…perhaps I can offer a wham bar OR 10 blackjacks OR  5 astra belts in return*? 

So yes, if you liked Tony Hogan then please do vote. I’d love to bring it home for the lassies, for the debuts and for everyone who’s championed wee Janie Ryan.

There’s also the most beautiful animation by Anna Pearson commissioned by Creative Scotland to accompany the first page of my book (read by me). I absolutely filled up when I saw it…

So. votevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevote

*if I win. Delivery not included. May be subject to change. As long as it’s not somehow breaking the rules, like.

Feasts of all kinds

Oh guys, I am seven shades of knackered. I’m drinking a green tea latte and wearing jeans and a big soft jumper and thinking of my clean, crisp white hotel sheets, of closing my eyes and letting sleep cover me.

I woke today at 6am and drew the curtains to dawn washing watercolour pinks and blues and greys over across Seoul’s mountains and glass skyscrapers. I decided since I was up I’d go for a run. The Somerset Palace is basically a serviced apartment block and while it is mind-blowingly fancy by my usual travelling standards (I used to cycle passed the Hanoi Somerset on the way to my own less than salubrious digs) the empty, stretching corridors have an eerie feel of the The Shining about them. That said, at some point I’m going to go have a quick jacuzzi on the rooftop looking at the thousand sparkling lights that make up Seoul at 11pm at night. The life of an author isn’t glamorous but sometimes you do get to have a rooftop jacuzzi in Seoul. The run was good but I must remember not to sing aloud when I run in the hotel gym. It is deathly quiet – except for me doing my asthmatic version of Prince’s ‘If I was your boyfriend’.

Today was meet, greet, feed day. We met the incredibly lovely and hardworking British Council staff who’ve organised everything for this trip. Outside the British Council building (which is also home to lots of other businesses) there was a protest. Men wearing matching orange bibs and chanting songs and, just beside them, police holding riot shields. Mostly people were smiling though and it put me in mind of girls and boys taking opposite ends of a school disco dance floor, eyeing each other for later.

We went for lunch – I am too tired to look up the spelling of the dish (Bimlipbap? Bamlimbac?) but it was rice, mushrooms and bitter greens and delicious. Other things happened…nothing you’ll want to spend time reading about but they were all fine. I had a nap – which you probably also don’t want to read about but a lady has to bridge – and then got taken to a beautiful wooden temple. It was filled with three giant golden Buddhas , the vast ceiling entirely covered with colourful paper lanterns. Outside a monk swung a rounded log, hitting a drum that sang right through the temple, right through my ribs. Like a temple full of saffron robed monks I visited in Laos or the Chinese one where people burned wads of fake dollars I used to go to in Hanoi, I hope that moment is kept somewhere. I want to remember. But I know how fickle memory can be.

For dinner we all, the British Council organisers and my fellow writers (the ace Tim Bowler and Julia Goulding), went and had a temple food feast. There were over ten different courses with ginseng root with honey, deep fried lotus root, acorn jelly, sticky rice wrapped in lotus flower, sesame soup and rice punch. Every course was more interesting and delicious than the last. The whole meal was a gift for my belly and tongue and curious head…though I became a little embarrassed by my boundless enthusiasm ‘wow! Amazing! This ones incredible!’ as though I’d only eaten cold Readybrek for the last thirty-two years.

Everyone is lovely. I really mean that. I have experienced so much kindness already in my short time here. Seoul feel like an enchanted island to me at the moment.

The next week goes like this: tomorrow I’ll go watch Tim and Julia at a YA conference, Wednesday I’ll do a talk and Q&A at the British Council, Thursday I’ll head to Gongju and do a talk on writing from life (I am nervous about this…I am always nervous about talks), Friday I’ll prepare like mad because on Saturday I’ll be performing a scene from the Tony Hogan one-woman show at Paju Booksori (I am very nervous about that because I’ve no idea how that will work with translation and it’ll be my first time ever performing a scene from it). On Sunday Tim and Julia will return to London and I’ll begin my three week writing residency. I am nervous about my events, I am very, very tired tonight, I feel like this is all a strange dream but I also know this whole trip is a wonderful gift. Food for the soul (I just typed that Seoul by accident) and for the belly too.

Ok, sleep must happen now. Night, night. Oh and look, here’s my name in Korean…

 

Seoul Undressed

That title’s going to bring all the wild, weird ones to my tumblr isn’t it? Anyway, I’m in the Somerset Palace (usually having Palace in the name is inauspicious in my experience but this is genuinely pretty swank - I have a sofa AND a bed), I’m on the 6th floor so look out at the cities sparking skyline juxtaposed by forested hills looming in the distance. This is the view in the daytime: 

Oh, and I’m wearing one of those ‘Vanilla Sky’ style face masks in an attempt to undo the twenty years aging that took place during my fight. The flight was ten and half hours. I slept for maybe two. That’s 120 non-consecutive minutes in 48 hours…I’m just saying to brace yourself for this post be be less than golden and if you’re one of those people who get a bit whoozy at the sight of a misplaced apostrophe then this is a public health warning to look away now.

You know what is sensible to do when you’ve just flown long-haul and not slept at all? Resting in your hotel room, drinking lots of water, eating a nice healthy meal. You know what’s more fun though? Buying a giant green tea latte, putting your swimmers in a Daunts canvas bag and heading across town to a giant sauna complex. Yep. 

This afternoon I went to arguably Seouls most famous sauna centre,  or Jjimjilbang, Dragonhill Spa. I like to think I’m a sauna aficionado, I’ve been to Banyan in Sibera, herbal ones in Laos, Hammam’s in both Paris and Palestine…but this was up there with the best and strangest…I felt like Alice right through the looking glass. And naked. With all of Seoul’s female population. Also naked.

There’s too much to talk about in a jetlagged blog so I’m going to tell you all about it later but it was one of the weirdest (and most delightful) travel experiences I’ve ever had. I went with my bones making ‘crunching’ noises when I moved and left with a huge smile on my face and nothing but marshmallow under my skin. Afterwards I wandered around a nearby department store and had some wasabe cream noodles and Cold Stone ice-cream (I tasted Cold Stone once TWELVE YEARS ago in Flagstaff, Arizona and have remembered it ever since…I actually thought the shop was an exhaustion-mirage. It wasn’t. JOY.).

So far Seoul is beautiful and buzzy and very easy and developed. People are incredibly kind as I do my odd mix of sign-language and Scot-rean, curling my tongue around words never meant to be said by a girl from Aberdeen. There are things that remind me so much of my other Asian adventures: Lotteria, Paris Gateaux, this weird face mask, the smell of cooking food always being in the air and the mix of old and new - a Pandora’s box waiting to be opened.

Ok. I must take my vanilla sky face and marshmallow muscles to bed. Night, night.

 

I wish I could fly - you can, you can

So here I am. Drinking a gin and tonic at an airport bar with some very loud Calvin Harris in the background.

Today I sent off my final THIRST edits to my editor. I ate eggy crumpets, bacon and maple syrup, drank a litre of black coffee (the food details are important I think…) and read and re-read the notes I’d been given and when I realised that, yes, I had done what I was meant to, I marked the file ‘THIRST edits complete’ and pressed SEND. I am elated. That book feels as real to me now as anything I’ve lived through myself, the characters as close as people I’ve known and loved. It’s seeped into my marrow somehow. I wonder how you keep storing those stories inside you as you keep writing more books…I hope I get the chance to find out. 

Then I wrangled my giant bags (eight hardbacks, five of my own, many, many variations of gym kit/pajamas, my one posh dress) and my elated self to Heathrow. My driver, from Bangladesh, told me all about his home town, of his own troubled love affair with a Russian woman and how he honeymooned in Nepal and stayed in a hotel made of bamboo. My check-in man said I looked ‘very excited to be travelling’ and changed me to a better seat, the twinkly elderly man looking after oversize luggage (those hardbacks…) winked at me and promised not to lose my backpack. I’d forgotten one of the greatest pleasures of travel is the kindness and company of strangers.

And I love an adventure, I never feel more engaged or inspired to write than when I am somewhere unfamiliar, learning every day my curiosity provoked on every street turning. 

For the next week I’ll be doing a week of festivals, talks and interviews in Seoul, the following week I’ll be writer in residence in Gongju, followed by a further two week residence in Seoul. All supported by the brilliant British Council (which I’m hugely grateful for). I’ll be on here each day talking kimchi, petting dogs and cooing children, research, stories, stormy skies, bustling markets, brief encounters, planes, trains and buses, saunas, stories, hotel rooms, the parts that make my heart swell and the ones that make it break a wee bit. I’ll be craning my neck, opening my eyes (and belly) to everything and capturing everything on here to remember it by. 

Excited? Me too. Before I catch my flight, here’s a picture of a knitted duckling with a plastic bowl of Ramen. You are all welcome. 

Shame, Happiness, Fudge and Dancing Polar Bears and Swears, So Many Swears

I feel a little ashamed.

Not because It’s coming up to 1pm and I’m still in my nightie (it’s actually a sundress so could pass as outwear but I did sleep in it last night. So…).

Or because all I have consumed today is three cups of coffee and two chocolate fudge bars (I actually think this should be a point of pride). 

No, I feel slightly ashamed because this is going to be another giddy, gluttonous post of bewilderment and gratitude. And though it scares me to celebrate - I was brought up to believe this sort of feeling could explode in your hands and singe your eyebrows off - I am SO FUCKING HAPPY today.  

Yesterday I won the Best First Book Category in the Scottish Book Awards. I’m now one of the four finalists along with Ewan Morrison, Gavin Francis and Richard Price. When I got the news I did my wee one-leg-other-leg-squee dance (copyright: all the women of my family). Sadly, I was unable to record the moment for posterity but found this basic approximation by a polar bear thanks to the internet - you’ll have to imagine the squeeing…

Dance along! There are so many good things that I can’t even process them all…They’ve hired amazing animators to animate the first page of each of our books! I won some money and that money will give me the freedom to keep writing (my third novel and the Tony Hogan one-woman show). Most of all it’s Scottish prize…it feels strangely like a homecoming somehow, like I’ve done good. 

I’m being totally honest when I say I can’t even begin to believe wee Tony Hogan, the story I wrote because I had to, the story I just hoped people wouldn’t slag off, that inspired a year-long pre-publication anxiety attack has been picked as one of Scotland’s best books of last year. The First Book shortlist was incredibly strong - full of authors I both like and admire - so I feel even more amazed. It's now in the final to win Book of the Year (and a frankly jaw-dropping prize) which will be decided by 50/50 public vote and the judges. I'd bloody love to bring it home for the debuts and the literary lasses. 

Whatever happens this has been the cherry on top of a beautiful fucking year of a cake…the shortlistings, the messages from readers, meeting incredible people, travelling…mostly the taking of the Ryan women into people’s hearts.

I am so, so fucking grateful to whatever star’s looking out for me. I don’t know how to say it better. 

So, yesterday I skittered about the streets of London and beamed and danced my little hoppy-dance. Today, I’m editing all day and all night, doing my laundry, I’m still in my nightie having only eaten two chocolate bars and at the risk of singeing my eyebrows, I am, I’m really fucking happy. 

Because Americans Like Swearing and Coke Floats Too

I’m bringing you this important Tony Hogan update from the blue striped cave of my duvet. Here is my beautiful Penguin US cover. It has ice-cream. It has sprinkles. It has a cherry. Look, LOOK, it has the Penguin emblem adorning it.

I love it so hard. Hope you do too…

Thanking my lucky stars as per usual

Being a writer is funny. To me it is still funny even calling myself that but there we go. It is funny because you live a strange, serendipitous existence.

Eight months in and this year has been a little thrill ride of unexpected things. I started the year drinking whiskey by a bonfire up in the Vietnamese mountains. Then I came home to freezing but beloved London and got to go to the Southbank Sky Arts Awards. I did some work for a charity supporting limbless ex-servicemen. I finished my second book and sold it. I went off to France for the Festival du Premier and then to surf Tynemouth. I wrote for the Guardian, Metro, Grazia. Now I am sitting in a little guestroom at Pembroke College about to put on the same posh frock I wore for the Southbank Awards (I only have one needless to say) to mark the end of three weeks of supervision sessions (workshopping, chatting writing) students at the National Academy of Writing - like something right out Educating Rita.

 

Tomorrow I’ll go to the Young Vic to continue devising the Tony Hogan one woman play with my incredibly talented director. In the spring Spread the Word will stage a London excerpt debut of the show and have provided a bursary to enable me to continue adapting the novel and working with Jonathan Kemp to design our Queer Fiction Arvon course which we’ll be teaching in June at the Ted Hughes Centre. Then? Then for August and September I’ll be working on my Thirst edits ready to deliver before…going to KOREA for the Paju Booksori and WOW Book Festivals. Afterwards I’ll travel a little: temple stays and mountains and beaches and kim-chi and K-pop. I’m thinking I may come back with the apple pip of novel three. I’m hoping so.

I think most people realise that these little red flags I’ve just pitched in the sand here don’t tell a whole story. Life still goes up and goes down. But Jesus, I am grateful. I feel like I have a strange, unexpected life at the moment and every day I think to myself if this is my little go of exciting stuff for a while I’ll happily have it then go back to normal and thank every star for everything I’ve been given. I don’t take a minute of anything for granted.  

 

 

 

An open letter to everyone who I have pissed off

Dear everyone I upset and who shouted at me on the internet this weekend, 

I am very sorry. 

Sometimes you think everything is going grand and life decides to tear a strip off you. Sometimes this is by letting you walk down the street with your skirt tucked into your granny knickers, sometimes by disenabling your motor skills when around someone you fancy, sometimes by having you mortified by the medium of a national newspaper supplement. I believe they call it being handed your arse.

If you are upset with me, if you’re one of the people who called me ‘ignorant’, ‘stupid’, ‘colonial’ or, my personal favourite, ‘a feckin’ eejit’ then no doubt you’ll have seen my article entitled Roddy Doyle: My Hero in the Guardian Review.

Make no mistake, for a wee debut writer like myself getting that slot was a big deal. It was special to me because I was so excited about getting to say thank you to one of my greatest influences and because of that I was really, really nervous about fucking up. So of course I fucked up.

I fucked up by writing ‘Roddy Doyle is one of Britian’s greatest writers’ when I actually meant ‘Roddy Doyle is loved and admired by many, many folks’ I meant his work had a far and wide reach - look at me who’d discovered Roddy in a tiny library in Norfolk - and that he was admired through Britain and, of course, Ireland too. It’s a clumsy, stupid sentence. A mistake. I make them a lot, in a lot of areas of my life - they happen, I fix them, I get on with stuff. Anyway, you guys know the rest, it was meant to be changed before the paper went to print as it was a stupid sentence that didn’t say what it was meant to. It wasn’t changed and I beat my thumb to a bloodied stump tweeting apologies to everyone (lots) who were mightily pissed off with me all weekend.

And yep, I was mortified (‘morto’ as Doyle’s characters would say) but mostly I was gutted that it seemed that few people were bothering to read beyond that first line, to read how heartfelt and honest my admiration and respect were for a man who changed my life by making me believe that even if I came from a council estate, was a bit gobby and no one really thought I should, I had a right to tell stories and write books as much as anyone else. 

Some people were kind, people who either acknowledged that I was at least being up-front, that the piece was clearly heartfelt or said that they made the occasional mistake themselves too. The funny thing is one of the reason I’ve always loved Doyle’s books is because his characters are flawed - they make mistakes, act like feckin’ eejits and fuck up. It happens, you’re not a bad person or a deliberate and concerted arsehole. These things happen. But usually if I’ve walked down the street with my skirt tucked into my knickers (true story) I’ve not had people still tweeting me three days later to demand an explanation. Still, this is not a real problem in the scale of things and I remember this - I’m a very lucky woman that I get the privilege of writing what I want to and live a life that makes me happy. 

So there we go. This is my formal apology to everyone who took exception to my clumsily worded sentence that was never meant to be printed in the first place. An apology full of swears (probably a few typos an’ all…sorry for those too) but as honest as can be.

To all of the people who I upset and all of the people who shouted at me: I am very sorry, I do know where Roddy Doyle comes from and I admire him and his writing just as much as ever.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what the man himself thought, he said on Facebook he’s made me an honourary Dubliner - whatever you do don’t tell Aberdeen. 

Peace,

Kerry