SAMHAIN

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Today, we call it Hallowe’en. In Ireland, in bygone times, it was Samhain, pronounced SAH-win, the end of summer. 

This time of year has a special place in Irish folklore and is still celebrated in various ways on the beautiful and mysterious Emerald Isle. 

For instance, the Puca, (Pooka) are the malevolent fairies who spit upon any unharvested apples at this time of year. Woe betide anyone who is unfortunate enough to bite into one of these apples! Could this be the origin of the fairy tale Snow White, where the King’s innocent daughter is offered a cursed apple by her Wicked Stepmother, who is the jealous Queen of the land?

The Puca, my favourites among Irish fairies are not just evil, they can shape-shift, taking many forms. Allegedly, they particularly enjoy taking the place of an elite’s steed, having fun unseating the unsuspecting rider mid-gallop. In times of starvation and death in Ireland, it’s easy to understand how this particular spirit could have been praised for tumbling the wealthy landowners and their cruel agents. The thread-bare indigenous Irish had no money for horses, they walked or stayed put.

By far the most haunting and long-held belief of Samhain is the notion that departed spirits can rise from the dead and re-enter the physical world at this time. Think of the mega-sales of Michael Jackson’s album Thriller, when he and other zombies danced and moonwalked, while Vincent Price’s other worldly laughter echoed around them. We love nothing more than being scared out of our skins!

But away from commerce and American entertainment, the beliefs in the fairies and demons who come to haunt us at Samhain grip us to this day. Trick or treating, bonfires, dressing up as witches, ghosts and devils, these are all customs carried on since times long past. Harmless fun or risking our immortal souls? Samhain, summer’s end, a time of darkness, of mysterious  ancient symbols, of fairies, feasting and famine, we remember and we celebrate them all on this ever-changing green island. Happy Haunting! 

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How To Make A Writer

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About to begin a new project and trying to decide which method will give the best chance of writing success. I’m a pantser by nature but, over the last year of so, I’ve been trying to incorporate an element of planning into my work. I’ve now gotten to the stage of always having an outline plan before starting to write. It’s helpful when I get lost in plot detail, or when I’ve forgotten which character said what to whom.

Most writers these days seem to follow: ‘ Write What You Love’, not what you know. I know about cooking, being a Mommy, renovating old houses, media and travel. These are themes which often appear in my writing. But what I ‘love’ is a tricksier question.

I love danger, suspense, conflict, deceit, betrayal, all the elements contained in a good thriller. I also love the good woman winning in the final few pages, or the good guy: I cheer on both heroes and heroines. I also love a bitter-sweet ending, one where the good protagonist wins through against adversity, but has to pay a helluva price to do so. I’m not against a bit of romance, but, for me, it shouldn’t be the be-all-and-end-all. These are the kind of story ingredients which stay with me and work their magic within my subconscious when writing new work.

What about you? What do you think makes a writer? Maybe you’re into memoir? It’s having a renaissance right now, everyone I know in writing circles seems to be currently working on memoir or family sagas. I’m guessing age is a factor here, Rom-Com and Steamy Sex belong to younger years. Once the kids are old enough to entertain themselves, without major risk, the notion of taking a stroll through Grandma’s photo album seems to appeal. I’m not there, yet. There’s still enough going on in the here-and-now to grab my attention and interest.

I’m practising, at the moment, little pieces of flash and short stories to get my writing muscles ready for the big task ahead. Notebooks are half-filled with scraps of this and that, character profiles are half-done, the setting is yet to be decided on. The only think I’m sure of is the theme and hopefully, that won’t change.

But you’ll know, as a writer, you can never say never. Not ever.

Winter

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Had to happen sometime. Been threatening for a few days and now it’s arrived. This morning the temp was 0.3C. That’s pretty cold for us wimps here in the UK. We’ve even got a little bit of snow on the pavements, the roofs and the hedges. It looks pretty, not mucked up yet, but soon the tyre tracks and footprints will steal its virgin beauty.

I like it right now, it’s good to look at, out of the windows. Don’t have to go out in it, luckily, have done my big shop for the week and there are no pressing appointments to keep. So I’m just gonna enjoy the sight and the silence of it.

And add a picture, just for you.

Take A Chance

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Now, I could write about Spring, which is peeping its head around the door. Or maybe I could write about the White House, which is busy, busy, busy, righting the wrongs of the last four years.

But, you know what? I’m feeling a little mellow to day, so I’m going to write about mood. It’s been a pig of a time over the last twelve months, we have been in a state of constant anxiety for several reasons, none of which I need to elaborate on here, unless you happen to be visiting from outside of our solar system

How to find some kind of ease from this anxiety? The TV news bangs on about it constantly, the newspapers are full of ‘how to’ advice on issues such as falling asleep, getting enough sleep, eating for health, mindfulness, exercise to lift your mood, the whole nine yards.

I’m not as flexible as I used to be, but I’m still prepared to have a go.

Maybe not this one.

This looks more like my style.


I’m sure I could manage this one, just need a handy forest lake.

So, maybe yoga? I’ll try it out and report back in a couple weeks.

Hope you’re ready to take a chance, too! Good posing!

Is 2021 Gonna Be Awesome?

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Hey, you guys! The New Year is already a month old and will soon be sleeping through the night!

So, what you been up to? I’ve been busy, writing more stories, reading more stories, cleaning the house, cooking, keeping going… it’s all good. Staying home, of course, to save lives.

Last year was a real bummer and the difficulties are not over yet. But things are maybe looking a little better. The Orange Blob has been kicked out of the White House, there’s a couple new public servants in there, fingers crossed for their successful progress in the coming months.

IN the UK, we’re still in Limbo land… out of the EU but not sure of the future. The pandemic has changed everything, eradicating the virus is every country’s number one priority, and so it should be. Until the World is okay, none of us is okay. It’s that simple. So I’m sure you’re doing your bit, and that we are all thinking of others as well as ourselves.

We can make this year awesome, if we want to and we all pull together. So chin up, best foot forward and all that jazz. Let’s give this 2021 a fighting chance. Happy New Year!

Snipers On My Roof?

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Just a couple weeks ago we all saw the POTUS being released from hospital and returned by helicopter to the White House. He’s supposed to have had Covid-19 symptoms. D’you think it was the virus? A lotta folks do, they feel really sorry for him and so proud that he is still battling on to get re-elected in a week’s time, even while suffering from a deadly infection. He is, without doubt, their absolute bestie. 

I’m pretty open minded about it all. Sure, he could have had symptoms, I’ve had symptoms, my friends have had symptoms, the folks in the next street have had symptoms. We all did what any sensible person would do. We stayed home and kept away from other folks. Even if we’d wanted to make a fuss and find out for sure, it would have been difficult. Tests are hard to come by. The general advice from the Covid-19 helpline is to self-isolate for fourteen days; by then it should be pretty obvious if you’re okay or not okay. So that’s how it works, in the UK and, I guess, other places, too.

But wouldn’t it be great if you had a few potential symptoms and you could get taken to the hospital or clinic, chauffeur driven, and given an amazing cocktail of drugs, so effective that within days, you were back to full health, without even a fever or a little hoarseness of voice? That would be something.

And then, imagine that you could be collected from the hospital by helicopter and taken straight back home to your folks, and that there would even be snipers on your rooftop, just in case some dangerous person decided to take a pot-shot at you. And, of course, that this would all be live-streamed on television, so the whole world could see how brave, important and self-sacrificing you were. That would be unbelievable. 

But, suppose for a minute, just maybe you didn’t have the virus after all. And that all that hospital fuss and helicopter hullaballoo and assigning snipers and huge publicity and live stream television would have been pointless. Except that maybe the publicity would have got everyone rooting for you. 

But once it turned out you weren’t really sick, wouldn’t somebody be chasing you to pay back all the money wasted on something that wasn’t even for real? Just saying… 

 

It’s the only World we’ve got

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Terrible things have happened before – take the Great War, that was pretty terrible. The Spanish Flu that came after, the Bubonic Plague back in the Middle Ages. World War 2, the Holocaust, more recent. Thing is, human history of our blue planet is a litany of terrible things happening.

So how come we got though all this terribleness more or less intact? The human race is still here, still destroying itself and the planet. But alive and, seemingly, thriving. Seems like even when we have real dumb-ass types in charge, humanity finds a way of stepping back from the brink. 

Trump is gonna lose, I’ll bet my own money on it. And, though the US is in a real shit-storm right now, decent people will take over and work hard to repair the divisions he has wrought. It will take time, of course it will, and no doubt many people will still lose their lives, either from Trumps’s denial of the pandemic or the precariousness of being a person of colour in a nation where that seems to be like a red flag to so many, even some law-enforcers. Maybe especially some law-enforcers.

And in the UK, the next election will see the defeat of the Tories, hopefully for many years. It will, I’m depending on it. The bean counters will be ousted. Humanity will prevail and quasi-dictatorship will give way to actual democracy once more. When that happens, it will present an opportunity for the UK to demonstrate to the US the many benefits of socialism. Right now US citizens are brainwashed into thinking socialism represents a repressive state. But what could be more repressive than free market capitalism? Basically the slogan for this kind of political belief is, ‘Bugger You, Jack, I’m All Right’. We need to return to the teachings of Beveridge and Buddhism. The current global ‘dollar worship’ isn’t working for people, wildlife or the natural world.

So when you see the sun low in the sky, know that it will rise again, if we help to keep it rising. We need to follow all those old fashioned sayings of cutting our carbon, loving our neighbours, caring for and loving our planet and not destroying it with waste and nuclear weapons. Don’t think that someone else will do this stuff, for there is no one here but us. 

For sure, we are feeling low right now, we have been buffeted by gust after gust of lies, disorder, broken promises. But we must not turn away and wait for someone to come rescue us. We have to take a long clear look at our world, decide how we can help to maintain it, reject the current mendacious forces keeping us in fear, and stand up to the Terrible. Together, with love in our hearts for each other and our world, is the only way we can win through.   

Some Characters – Tolstoy versus Turgenev

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I’be been reading a book by Richard Cohen, entitled How to Write like Tolstoy. Now, I don’t especially want to write like anybody, I want to write like me and set my own example for others to follow. But when I noticed that the book was endorsed by twice Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, I thought there might be something in it. If you have read Wolf Hall, you’ll get my drift.

The book follows the usual How To rules with chapters on beginnings, characters, point of view, etc.. The chapter on characters I found particularly enlightening and amusing. It seems that there was a rivalry between two masters of literature – Tolstoy and Turgenev – about the creation of characters. Turgenev allegedly didn’t speak to Tolstoy for several years because he thought Tolstoy was better than him at creating characters.

How brilliant is that? Here are these two incredible writers, creators of Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) and Fathers and Sons (Turgenev), who were so competitive and jealous that they behaved like schoolboys over who excelled in character creation. Tolstoy (allegedly) showed off and Turgenev (allegedly) couldn’t stand his contemporary’s superior ability at characterisation.

Cohen refers to a story, it may be apocryphal, about the two men playing together on a seesaw, forcing each other to soar higher and higher, until… well, he doesn’t actually finish the story. But the point is clear. How childish, how relatable, how much this story will be understood by every fiction writer. How totally human.

Fiction writing is all about character. Create an unforgettable character, you’ve cracked it. Think Madame Bovary, Humbert Humbert and Lolita, Dr Zhivago, or, departing the Russian Masters for a moment, Scarlett O’Hara, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Gollum. These are characters who will live in your imagination as strongly as members of your own family.

Have a look at How to Write Like Tolstoy: there are some little gems you might find useful in your own writing.

The New New

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Uh-oh! WordPress has been upgrading and improving again. As I haven’t posted anything for about eighteen months, I’m up the creek, paddle less. Nothing else for it but to jump right in, so here we go…

So, should I create a public profile? Do I want to share my words of wisdom and a photograph of my fizzog with my followers? What have they done to deserve that shock! Why would I want to be visible?

Well, many moons ago, when the earth was young and flat, I decided to become a writer and write stuff. Anyone can dream, can’t they? And a wise old Yoda told me that I would need a blog, to publicise my words and show the world how it’s done. Or not, as the case may be.

So you’ve seen some words: now what about that photo?

A Meaningless Deal? Or Just Madness?

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I don’t want to write this, but I must face the fact that the Maybot has just signed the Brexit withdrawal and draft future trading agreement with the other 27 EU countries. There was no argument from the EU, Unity was preserved, much to the delight of the 27, though they do look rather shell-shocked, reminiscent of Gove and Johnson the morning after the referendum result. Spain in particular was cock-a-hoop, crowing that co-soverignty over Gibraltar was now a clear prospect.

I console myself with the fact that there is little chance of May getting the so-called deal through the Commons. The troops are lining up to shoot her down, or stab her in the back, depending on your pov. It says something when the Scottish Nationalists, the Democratic Unionists, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and even many Conservatives on both sides of the Leave/Remain argument can come together in their condemnation of what Jeremy Corbyn called a ‘miserable failure of a negotiation’ which offers the ‘worst of all worlds’. Good description, JC, though why couldn’t you have spoken up and offered some leadership earlier in the debate?

Now we wait and fret until the ‘meaningful vote’ in the House, in a couple of weeks time, time the PM will spend attempting to buy loyalty from her party and threatening future calamities for the UK if her deal is rejected. I pray the current opposition from all sides to the deal holds and that our politicians, for once, put the interests of the country before personal gain and don’t bottle it.