Oh hello again...

I have a belly full of ice-cream and a jam jar full of tangerine syrup and soda. I’m bare foot and wearing a summer dress. I’m singing along to this. It’s ten days until Christmas and if it wasn’t for the occasional Starbucks piping out Bing Crosby I’d have no idea.

Hello from Buenos Aires.

Did you want some news? Ok, the biggest news is that I caught up on all my lost work. My manuscript currently stands at 53,185 words. Thank fuck for that. I am following my own best advice - sitting down every day and powering through the story, allowing myself free reign because it is a first draft, knowing that I’ll go back and fix things that I know aren’t quite right. Forward is the only way. I’m dead, dead happy about this. The world feels right when the words are there…and they’re always there, I just need to give them voice.

What else? Well, I left Lisbon with a teary farewell. A friend said the cake shop owners wore black armbands. I’ll be back though, it’s a special place full of special people (and cakes). 

I returned home to London for five whirlwind days. I met to talk plans for next summer’s National Academy of Writing at Pembroke College and I’m excited to say that, after two years of supervising, in 2015 I’ll be co-convening with NAW Director and founder of the summer school creative writing programme, Richard Beard. I’ll be living in beautiful Pembroke for the month and working as hard as I can to make the course valuable to the new intake. It is a good thing I think and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in.

Then it was off to Norwich for a Writers’ Centre Norwich ‘Agent and Author’ event with my brilliant agent Juliet Pickering and Ben Johncock (his book, The Last Pilot is out next year and I am sure it will fly). And the next day meetings with my brilliant IdeasTap Inspires and WCN mentees Jonnie Bayfield and Alex Scarlet Mullen. It’s no overstatement for me to say they are outrageous talents - it’s truly energising and humbling to work with them. Read extracts of their works in progress here. And here’s a picture of all the brilliant mentees (Alex third from the right and Jonnie second from the right…damn, they’re stylish too). 

And then? Then I returned to London and played with my godkids, ate curry (Brick Lane), drank cocktails (Dalston) and had some burgers (Honest) and generally caught up with my best pals. It was wintery and London was beautiful. We walked the canal, I walked past ‘Dave and Alena’s Mosque’ where they share their first tender moment. I realised how much Hackney was home to me and how much I was missing it.

Oh, and I went to Great Portland Street and had a meeting at Passion Pictures…read Variety in the waiting room, gushed like a small child about how much I loved The Arbor, how much I respected the films they made and, not for the first time this year, wondered how my life had got so mad that I’d be able to go to a film production office and talk about my books and their films. Life is mental. Life is wonderful.

London got under my skin a bit. It was so good to see my close people, to feel the thrum of London, to know every nook and cranny, to have a secret and a story for every corner. What I’m saying is, it was hard to leave this time. For the first time in a year I really wanted to stay at home but off I went anyway…life is also short.

I went to Madrid for a few days and spent all my time in a working class area with a great municipal pool and chocolate con churro cafe (a winter day swim and then a plate of churros and chocolate is one of the best things in the world - official). I flew to Rio de Janerio and lay on Copacobana Beach but still preferred wandering around my little neighbourhood and eating mountains of hummus at my local Lebanese restaurant.

Then I went to Icuagu Falls. And yes, they were amazing. I trekked the rainforest trail there by myself and saw a crocodile, a family of monkeys, caoti, the cutest armadillo ever…the sound of the rainforest was extraordinary, the waterfalls had rainbows over them. Life is mental. Life is wonderful.

Sometime around there I was utterly fucking delighted to be shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize with five other wonderful writers. That’s two shortlistings for two books on the prize so they are officially my favourite. The prize went to Annelise Mackinstosh for Any Other Mouth which is a worthy winner indeed.

 

And now? Now I am in Buenos Aires. It is a beautiful, frenetic, dirty, stunning city. It’s full of life and stories. The streets are in grids with streets that stretch for miles and my favourite thing to do it to choose one and walk its length passing through different neighbourhoods, from a little rough to elegant, stopping when I’m curious, meeting people on the way, making up little stories.

I got a beautiful art deco apartment in an area called San Cristobel, not posh, not full of expats and all the better for it. At my local cafe the grandad brings me extra cookies with my cafe con leche and pinches my cheek, the local ice-cream parlour know me by name (no surprise there…), the man who hands out leaflets outside the supermarket wearing big red headphones kisses my hand as I go by…it is a proper neighbourhood and they’ve embraced this lanky, Scottish, smiling woman as much as I could have wished for. Otherwise I work - on my novel, a new year project, WoMentoring - in my covered balcony overlooking the garden, listening to the whistling bird song and John Coltrane. I’m working really hard and it feels brilliant to have the days and environment to do that. I run at my very hot little local gym and take tango and Latin dance classes. It’s very quiet, very peaceful and very, very good for writing a novel.

I feel very lucky I get to travel. I hope I say that often enough. That I know what a privilege this is. I am so grateful. Growing up I desperately wanted to travel (all those hours watching Judith Chalmers on Holiday) and never knew if I ever would. I feel very grateful I get to write what I choose to without any fear of doing so too. I feel lucky that London still feels like home, that it excites me to be returning in February. Life is mental. Life is wonderful. Good to acknowledge those things I think and I’m doing that every day. Besos amigos!