Susie Wild's Blog: Wildlife, page 37

Guadalajara: Wednesday

Back at FIL on Wednesday morning the stands have been shuffled around and we've more space to spread out the Parthian display. I busy myself with that before the British Council networking reception at the UK publisher stands at lunchtime.





Afterwards we sat down to work out the questions and answer flow for Thursday's 9am panel discussion in the UK Pavilion space with Mari, Owen and John (chaired by Hazel from Accent Press).

That evening Rebecca and I returned to the anbiently-lit Cathedral squares by night, exploring side streets where locals had rigged up an outdoor cinema with a sheet tacked to a construction work awning – there were a lot of roadworks centrally – and then we stumbled across some al fresco private party to do with shiny cars, before Owen joined us for a quiet dinner at a place with great views and company but bad food (we were yet to hit our food luck stride).

Guadalajara: Tuesday

Refreshed after some sleep and with a seemingly busy day ahead I'm up and showered early and taking advantage of the fruit and coffee at the B&B. Having made arrangements to pick up our passes from the old town the day before plans are changed again that morning and our early taxi takes us to the new pick up instead -– the MIND centre around the corner from the main FIL Guadalajara site. There we find Mabli Jen Eustace, an elfin Cardiff MET student who is creating a painting by the Wales exhibition in the foyer. She's popular with staff and visitors alike as her vibrant abstract piece, inspired by a visit to the local market and the historic old town, builds in layers. Read her blog about creating the piece and her visit to Mexico here.

Mabli gives us our festival passes and explains that the 10.30am Media and VIP reception announcing the Welsh delegation that we were heading in for is cancelled. So we grab another coffee on the cafe terrace instead before heading round to FIL Guadalajara to set up our books on the Welsh Government stand and get our bearings.











The UK Pavilion is a prominent red structure, complete with a walkway that slopes over and around the small room for talks and is closed often for noise and crowd control reasons. It draws people's attention in from one of the main entrances – a clatter of feet on boards – but the end of the walkway delivers them away, often without noticing the UK Publisher stands tucked into a discreet corner. As cultural ambassadors both John and Rebecca must be at the stand for a part of each day, so we do a shift but traffic is fairly slow. Once our stall is set up, and promo material and catalogues displayed on the pavilion's front desk, we take it in turns to walk around the gigantic site looking for potential places to make contact with and other people we know.

Trade and education titles are being pushed everywhere as it is their day today and the aisles are singing, with mariachi bands popping up for impromptu sets at stand parties. Time seems to disappear inside this aircraft hanger space and we soon find that it is time to pop back and see Mabli and then flag down a taxi to our B&B to scrub up for the evening's Welsh Reception.


I think I'm awake now
Hospicio Cabañas
Celia, Jonah, John and Mari
I'd like a dozen of these full-skirted dresses please

 Mari, Rebecca and Owen


We join John, Celia, Mari, Jonah and Hazel at a table in the courtyard of Hospicio Cabañas. It is prettily lit, with a central stage, a table where you can guess the name of the dragon and the number of sweets in a jar to the right, and the Doctor Who tardis to the left. I meet various publishing and literary Brits, including Cortina Butler, Literature Director from the British Council but I don't spot any other UK authors. Another Welsh author, Owen Martell, joins us and there is dancing (on stage) and later dancing (off stage at another party) where the beer, tequila and mescal flows freely.

Guadalajara: Monday

It turns out it takes a long time to get to Guadalajara. Even for those who do know ‘the way to San José ?’. I’m not sure if it is my longest journey but it is definitely Top 3. On the way out, after sitting cosy in Hay Castle with mulled wine, we fight through the rain and dark to the car and Richard drives us to Heathrow for our late Sunday overnight flight. On the way through security my bag is searched as it is always searched at airports. I look really dodgy apparently, or I should stop making quips about drug smuggling on blogs, but otherwise we pass through without hitch, luck out with three seats to the two of us, and, after discovering there’s nothing we can eat on the long plane journey as our special meals (dietary requirement divas that we are) weren’t booked we instead opt to sleep until a view appears. We sleep a lot. 
It’s a 12.5 hour journey to Mexico City. There we stand in queues in the terminus for two hours before boarding to fly the 1.5 hour flight to Guadalajara. Incidentally a large, sweating man in his fifties and crease chinos pushes through the queue citing a flight he must get in half an hour, and we later find him one row ahead of us in the second lot of queuing later. But perhaps he got breakfast or whiskey or something. It was probably a wise move as we find ourself stuck on the plane for a further two hours (fog) before we take off. As the fog clears and we arrive into Guadalajara airport, Mexico appears to be made up of tiny stacks of coloured gift boxes while Californian Christmas music plays on the tannoy. Santa’s gone surfing and the snowmen aren’t that cool anymore. 
Airport exit is surprisingly simple and we take our tired selves to the taxi stand where another queue snakes but is efficiently dealt with. I need more coffee but the sunshine and blue skies have already got me smiling and I question how so many of the other local young women look so polished in their high heels and ripped jeans and sleek hair. My hair, hair that is used to Welsh rain, doesn’t tend to travel to hot places well. I’m clammy and frizzy and overloaded with luggage and I’m hungry too. 

At the hostel being late works to our advantage, our rooms are almost ready to check in to… we sit, type in the wifi password and message loved ones... then shower and change...



I only recently discovered the Poinsettias hail from Mexico. One lives on the roof terrace of the B&B, another lives in my house in Splott.


...and finally head out to explore our square mile of the city. We’re hunting for food and landmarks to navigate by over the week, and cash points, the nearest shop for water, any promising looking places to eat. We’ve landed in Studentville. It is safe and sleepy. Heading out on Monday afternoon there’s a corner bar we mistake for a cafe. Once seated we discover there’s only hamburgers and pitchers of beer and lots of students, the odd lone older man hogging a pitcher to himself with a straw. 
Students can be petulant everywhere, one pouty boy at the bar is raising an eye and a smirk in our pale direction but another girl is friendly… there’s no coffee to be had but we manage water for us both and a tequila for me, it is tequila country, and this is our travel recovery day off…and it is good, smooth, nothing like the throat-stripping crap they serve in UK dives,  and then we head out via the cashpoint and water bottle fill up stop of the 7-ll to the old town. The architecture is a ramshackle mix of elegant monuments and modern blocks and shacks in fruity shades - electric fan shops, lacemakers, haberdasheries, Chinese restaurants, saloon bars, hairdressers, niche markets. A muddle of merchandise and merchants spill out onto the street like the drunk students from that Vancouver Wings bar. The street we weave along is one full of shops selling christmas trees and wool, women crowding at the wool counters of shops, women gathering to knit in chairs in the streets, the original yarn bombers. Men sit in the shade of trees on benches playing draughts with beer bottle tops and kids walk past with ice cream as big as their face, licking the pink syrupy swirls with pinker tongues.

Our timing is bad, the vegetarian restaurant (Ki’tzen) we’ve made a beeline for is closing as we arrive, and the budget  nearby second choice Alta Fibra is hard (for us) to find and not especially appetising but we fill up anyway as a large dinner and drink only costs £2. There’s a lentil burger, some rice, beans, tortillas (all cold) and a sweet yoghurty drink a bit like lassi. We do find the Cathedral first though and sit a little while under a tree to admire the view and the fountains, the first of many fountains we’ll see on our trip, the rest mainly illuminated with green and magenta spotlights by night. 
Worn out horses pulling ornate carts pass tourists around the sights, and then rest at the side of the square. We stick to travelling on feet, get a little lost but find our landmarks and Rebecca’s sense of direction returns and we head back to the hostel aiming to read but defeated by jetlag instead sleep some more.

Book Review: The Good Son by Paul McVeigh

REVIEW: THE GOOD SON, PAUL MCVEIGHSUSIE WILDREVIEWS0 COMMENTS
25SHARESFacebookTwitterNewsletterROLL UP, ROLL UP Susie Wild reviews Paul McVeigh’s debut novel The Good Son (Salt Publishing 2015)  I was born the day the Troubles started.‘Wasn’t I, Ma? says me.‘It was you that started them, son,’ says she, and we all laugh, except Our Paddy. I put that down to his pimples and general ugliness. It must be hard to be happy with a face like that.Roll up, Roll up for the Mickey Donnelly show — a vivid, playful, fence-hurdling, page-turning act of cocky bravado and endearing imagination. Mickey is a shining star of a protagonist; charming, erudite, and warmly, infectiously funny. He breathes fresh air into the much raked over subject of Ireland’s Troubles. Still, those that live in Mickey’s square mile in 1980s Ardoyne are often immune to his charms, calling him ‘a gabshite’, ‘wee maggot’, ‘gay’. Scundering him in broad daylight. Scundering him at night.
Read the review in full on the Bare Fiction website

Book Review: A Gift of Sunlight

Gifts Indeed. I've reviewed Trevor Fishlock's new book A Gift of Sunlight: The fortune and quest of the Davies sisters of Llandinam (Gomer, 2015) for issue 55 of The Welsh Agenda.

The Metropolitan Review Interview and Launch

It was lovely to speak to the students at Cardiff MET about work, writing and publishing. They also asked an informed bunch of questions during the formal and informal Q & A sessions. I stayed on in the evening for the launch of their brand new online journal The Metropolitan Review before braving reading extracts of a Cornish prose work-in-progress, as I thought I'd put myself back in their open mic shoes and there were a number of Cornish students present. Then I was able to sit back and enjoy the rest of the readings and I was particularly impressed with the confidence of the first year readers. 



















You can read the interview by the evening's well-dressed host and journal co-editor Renn Hubbuck-Melly on The Metropolitan Review.

Photo Blog: The Murenger

Some lovely photos by John Briggs from The Murenger gig last week:

Posing for this shot because the (good) photographer, who has often photographed me, insisted... I'm a bit like 'John, give up, I'm not photogenic today and I want a pint now, before we run for the train... please...?' and full of cold and fever... so amazed I look vaguely alive, really...






See Octopoet documented on Flickr by Dave Daggers from Sunday too (I'm hiding)...

Octopoet at Made in Roath

I had a lovely time reading with Tom Bullough and the open mic lot at Ye Old Murenger in Newport last night. Thanks so much to Alan Roderick for organising it. Here's a picture of me there (thanks to the ever-lovely Torben, supporting me despite having an awful cold that I gave him):


News just in:
Made in Roath: Octopoet, 11th October, Coffi House, Wellfield Road, Roath, Cardiff, 7.30pm, free entry: 'Our brilliant line-up is now confirmed as: Bethany W Pope, David Foster-Morgan, Francesca Rhydderch, Susie Wild, David E. Oprava, Carly Holmes, J Brookes, Dave Daggers and kicking things off, the national treasure that is Boyd-Clack and Kirsten Jones. What a stellar collection! Come along if you haven't tried Octopoet before - there is a range of perfomances to suit all tastes. And if you have been before, you know what an enjoyable, eclectic and thought-provoking evening it is.'

Secondary Character - First Review

So, a first review for the Secondary Character anthology from the Welsh Short Story Network has been published on Goodreads and I get a couple of pleasant mentions...

'The writing is excellent throughout - I was often arrested by an image or way of wording things, which I usually jot down so I can revisit them later. Some of those in my pad as I glance through it now are:
“Each month brought a new period of bereavement, a red morning to mourn.”
(Susie Wild, “Pocillovy” - making words work twice as hard.) 

[...]

Although I enjoyed all the stories, I inevitably had personal favourites, no doubt different from the next person's (which is one of the fun things about anthologies). Without giving too much away, these ones made me think the most:

[...]

Susie Wild, “Pocillovy” - really captures the lead character's headspace.

[...]

As you can tell, I recommend this collection if you like contemporary short stories!' 

Read the review in full

Available now from Opening Chapter, Amazon, etc...

Ye Olde Murenger Gig, Newport, 7th October

Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1127700037257944/1127701357257812/