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Of Bird-Brained Burblings June 23, 2009

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces, Novel , 30 comments

I woke up at 5am this morning.  Through the outside sounds of crowing cockerels and bickering chickens, a thought came to me.  I must confess my sins.  Well, actually, there’s only one.  I have not *gulps and looks around shiftily* written any words since I moved.  Not one.  But there is a reason for this.  A reason that has pervaded my very being.  I… um.. fell in love.  Only a little bit.  But it distracted me.  The recipient of this had been around for a while, waiting, it would seem, for the right time to sneak into my life and change me.  *Sigh*… It wasn’t even a bloke.  It was Rose Tremain’s The Road Home.  It was such so stylish, so irresistible.  As I read, I turned down the bottom of pages I wanted to come back to, seeking out delicious phrases and caressing them as you would a lover’s cheek.  And then I realised. 

I want to move people, make them cry.  And I’m not going to do that by prattling on about hippies, bongos and Paul McKenna.  Sorry Paul.  You can hunt me down and get me with your googly eyes and velvet voice if you like.  But I can take the concept of my idea.  It just needs a different vibe, voice, whatever.  I have fallen out of love with Novel 2.  And, to be honest, I’ve fallen out of love with the idea of writing another novel. 

My writerly bits are ready for change.  I need to fill my creative well.  To let my pens potter and find a new direction.  Create snippets and scribblings.  Let these technicolour seeds germinate and see where the rainbows form.  The novel-writing will be back.  It’ll just be wearing a grubby mac and dark shades rather than a Jordan-esque bikini under a transparent top. 

I didn’t think my teeny tiny cottage would change me.  Not really.  But I am changing.  And as we change, our axis changes and the world whizzes about at a different angle.  Oh dear, I’m talking tosh.  I blame the chickens.  But there’s something bubbling away, something thrilling and undefined.  Festering, perhaps.  Who can say?

Crumbs.  Don’t I sound grown-up?

re-invention

 

Of Rural Realisation June 9, 2009

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 26 comments

Hello.  This blog post is coming to you from my wardrobe.  No, really.  It is.  In my new teeny tiny cottage, I do not have a study.  So I decided to build one in my wardrobe.  Of course, it’s not a real wardrobe – more of a vertical ditch with a curtain across.  I even made my desk and used a screwdriver and everything!  Thanks, John Lewis, your flat-pack wotsits are pleasantly put-uppable.  But half an hour?  Half a blinkin day, more like.  But I did it, all on my very own.  I’ve even treated myself to a power screwdriver.  You see?  Now that I’ve escaped the cul de sac, I’m more B&Q than Jimmy Choo.

So.  I have now been here 10 days and have learnt plentiful things.  I have discovered that cockerels actually do perform their cock-a-doodle-doo routines at dawn.  The real dawn.  Not a gentleman’s dawn.  And dawn, I can reliably inform you, is at around 3.50a.m.  Every a.m.  Not only are there the birds, horses and pigs on the land opposite my bedroom window, on the other side of the house, at the end of my garden are sheep.  I know they’re sheep.  I’ve seen them.  But actually, they do not sound like sheep.  They sound like drunk men lying in a field, pretending to be sheep.  It is most odd.

I have discovered that I can survive without the internets.  I always imagined that, when on Desert Island Discs, I’d have to confess to Kirsty that my luxury item would be a laptop with broadband.  But no.  I managed a whole week without checking my blog stats.  Luckily, lovely non-bf sent helpful texts saying ‘you have had 21 visitors so far and people found your website by searching for woll saucepans, bullet bra, arses and dastardly sentence’.  Oh dear.

I have discovered that living here will not automatically transform me into a writing machine; nor find me doing yoga in my undies on my titchy terrace before the world (exc. cockerels, obviously) wakes up; nor be able to manage without my electric blanket (retrieved from box last night and firmly reunited with bed).

But.  I have also discovered that if you get out early enough, you might just see two foxes lying with the sheep under the first rays of sun shine.  You might just see a huge red hot air balloon wheeze asthmatically over the silent, dewy fields.

Yes.  I think I really rather like it here actually.

Baaaa