Monthly Archives: October 2014

V is for Vietnam

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For our honeymoon we went to Vietnam. It was a challenge fitting even a fraction of what I wanted to see there into those two weeks, but I was determined to try.

We started in Hanoi, spending two days walking around the city, soaking up the sights and smells and flavours. That was where I took this picture: just another selection of wares in a pavement stall, but one that with its seafood and herbs and vegetables sums up what I love about Vietnamese food. I love the colours and textures in this picture too, and the shapes – all those circles full of promise.

So much of our trip was about the food, really. That was what had inspired us to go in the first place – the pho and the summer rolls and the banh cuon we’d enjoyed in restaurants in Hackney. We had a Vietnamese supermarket near us there too, but it was wonderful to see all of the ingredients in their homeland.

By the time we left, we’d sampled all sorts of new dishes, successfully dodging the peanuts that would have triggered an allergic reaction to discover a huge range of exciting tastes. We’d seen noodles being made, rice paper rounds drying in the sun, prawns being crushed to create the pungent paste that was seemingly at the base of everything. We’d learnt to cook some new dishes as well: spicy seafood hotpot, and even those delicious banh cuon – delicate and slippery steamed rolls filled with prawns and pork.

I’d love to go back, and not just for the food. It is such a beautiful country – and so steeped in history. Hopefully one day, when Arthur’s a little bit older, we’ll be able to revisit for a longer trip.

V is for Vietnam.

 

Joining in with The Alphabet Photography Project over at PODCast Dove.

 

What if my normal isn’t normal after all?

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I have encountered this week a particularly pernicious breed of self-doubt.

On the surface, everything’s going pretty well with the edit – fantastically well in fact. I’m a few pages from hitting the halfway point, and well on my way to getting this round of redrafts completed by the end of the month. My characters are being extremely helpful as I try to tweak the various elements of their story, and the conceit I’ve adopted to deal with some of the bigger problems with the way it’s told seems to be working – at least to my mind.

But this is where the doubt is seeping in.

When I shared my thoughts about the challenge of writing dreams last week I got some really useful feedback, but it did make me realise how completely subjective peoples’ experiences of the world are: that something I think is entirely normal might be entirely alien to someone else. This might be particularly pronounced when it comes to dreams – they are after all not bound by any of the normal rules of reality. But it’s not only this that worries me.

Way back before the summer, as I got ready to release the first draft to my initial readers, I had a niggling sense that maybe my main character wasn’t very nice. I knew why – she’s on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster but doesn’t really know it, and that’s manifesting itself in a combination of abrasiveness and shyness, shutting herself away. I’d been there, and I felt sorry for her. I knew she didn’t mean to come across the way she did, and so did her friends. And anyway, she really wasn’t that bad.

But the feedback I got – not from everyone, but from people whose opinions I really trust – was that she was really quite unpleasant. Completely unlikeable in fact, to the point where important elements of the plot just cease to make sense.

I’m working on that – I can see where they’re coming from after all. But as I change the things Grace says and how she says them, as I try to get her to open up a bit and to demonstrate that she really is a friend worth having, I start to doubt myself. Maybe the reason she comes across so badly is because I’ve modelled her on myself, and maybe I’m just not all that likeable. Maybe my ideas about what makes someone worth caring about are just so far removed from what normal people think that I’m never going to be able to create a character who people will like enough to invest in her story.

And then this makes me wonder about everything else. Things I take for granted as thoughts or ideas or experiences that people will share, that I’m counting on to be able to create the common ground that will form the foundations of the world of my novel: maybe they’re just me, just my warped way of seeing things which will do nothing other than switch people off and make them look away.

I think maybe I’ve been spending too much time in my head.

And actually, even stepping back enough to write this makes me realise that things are probably ok. That this is just another one of those self-doubt demons, adopting an increasingly sophisticated guise as I become wise to his usual ways.

I know that I’m more than a little bit bonkers. And it is this that, hopefully, is going to lend my words the original edge they will need to be heard. If people don’t instinctively identify with the characters and ideas in my story then I will just need to make damned sure that my writing is strong enough to convince them to go beyond their comfort zone.

Who needs normal anyway?

 

Writing Bubble

 

Trains, goats and autumn leaves

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This weekend, we managed to tick something else off our South Devon bucket list. We’ve been past the Rare Breeds Farm in Totnes countless times on the train to London, the vintage-style platform of the South Devon Railway looking like a gateway to another world. Having finally made it there on foot I can confirm that those first impressions really are quite accurate.

From the first steps beyond the station car park into the woodland path you feel like you’re onto something special, a sensation made even stronger once the bridge across the river comes into view.

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I think Arthur could happily have stayed right there, watching the mainline trains speed past mere metres away, but little did he know the other treats in store.

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To get to the farm you have to walk along the steam railway platform. Everything is beautifully maintained, and we were lucky enough to arrive just as a special service was pulling in. Arthur was captivated by the comings and goings, eagerly ‘choo choo’ing as Leigh explained the mechanics of the steam engine to him. Once again we could have ended our trip right there and they both would have been very happy.

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We managed to tear ourselves away, and headed over the tracks to the little farm itself. After picking up some feed in the cafe we went through the gates – and immediately came face to face with a row of owls.

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I’m not sure Arthur believed they were real at first, but then we found a very little owl called Flitwick just waiting to be stroked.

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After a gentle stroke of Flitwick’s feathers we continued further on, coming across some very lively red squirrels. I’m not sure Arthur knew quite what to make of them!

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And then we found the goats. I don’t think Arthur’s met goats before, and these ones were very friendly. One of my favourite moments of the afternoon was him giggling ‘Fingers! Fingers!’ as they greeted him enthusiastically through the fence. He even had a go at feeding them, and when we ventured inside was quick to make himself at home.

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There were some beautiful sheep too, though Arthur was happy to let Daddy take the lead on feeding those.

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After meeting all the larger animals we came across the guinea pigs, and Arthur sat himself down for a little cuddle. He thought it was a ‘baby dog’ at first, and got very confused when we said it was a sort of pig…

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All in all it is a very special place, and we will most definitely be back. It’s just a shame we discovered it so late in the season! Though that did give us the excuse for a bit of frolicking in the autumn leaves – the perfect end to a perfect afternoon.

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Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

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Word of the Week: Chatterbox

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Of all the things that continue to amaze me every day about my gorgeous son, his developing language skills are possibly the most exciting. This week in particular he has been chatting away to anyone who will listen – very cute, and fascinating to be getting more of an insight into what’s going on inside that head of his!

I’ve lost count of the number of words he now knows – from octopus to helicopter, from banana to hedgehog. He’s a fantastic mimic, and seems to only need to hear the name for something once before he’ll remember it for next time. What’s particularly interesting at the moment though is how he uses those words, combining them with others to express his wants and needs or explain things to us. He’ll happily engage in conversation about what he’s been up to during the day, making our family dinners when Leigh gets home after a long day’s work increasingly entertaining.

He was being particularly chatty with his London grandparents on Skype the other evening, and it’s lovely to see him beginning to want to share his experiences with them – and to be able to put them into words.

In fact the sociability of his speech is something I’ve noticed increasing day by day. For a while he’d happily chat away to me when it was just us at home during the day, but other people – especially strangers – would comment on how quiet he was. But now he’ll chat to anyone who’ll listen – the man who came to fix our oven on Monday had trouble actually settling down to work as every time my back was turned Arthur had toddled over to tell him about something else he felt he had to share.

It’s not just people Arthur’s chatting to either. I absolutely love catching him having conversations with his toys – whether it’s his dump truck or his penguins. Even better than that are the conversations he’s started enacting between them, another important step in his discovery of imaginative play.

He’s begun to really pick up the less essential nuances of conversation too, which is where things get super cute. He’ll ‘ummm’ and ‘ahhh’ as he’s trying to think of the right thing to say, has started adding on ‘see you in a bit’ to his goodbyes and is even beginning to maybe see the point of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ – though I won’t hold my breath on that one.

It is incredible to watch, but I’m under no illusion that Arthur’s special in all this. I know that what I’m witnessing is just the normal development of language that is going on as I type in homes up and down the country, throughout the world. And yet actually that is even more humbling. All these little powerhouses of potential beginning to venture out of themselves into the big wide world of verbal communication, absorbing all the words around them and digesting them and manipulating them to fit the messages they want to put across. Amazing really – I can’t wait to hear what he comes out with next!

 

The Reading Residence

U is for upside down

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I’ve raided the archives again this week. This photo of me doing a headstand in the garden pretty much sums up my early childhood: outdoors, and upside down. Whether it was hanging in trees, rolling head over heels or walking on my hands I was never happier than when things were the wrong way up.

I remember one morning in primary school when someone bet me that I couldn’t stand on my head for the whole of break. Never one to turn down a challenge, I promptly kicked my heels towards the sky. Everyone else got bored after a few minutes but I was seriously proud of myself when the bell went. That, and a little bit dizzy.

It’s something that’s never really left me. I got very into trampolining in my teens, drawn by the prospect of somersaulting through the air. I learnt to fly forwards, backwards, tucked, piked and straight, twisting and landing on my back and front and feet. It was pretty awesome.

As I bounced into my twenties I still somersaulted whenever I could, but I’d hit a (virtual) ceiling. I couldn’t really learn new skills without proper training, and there was too much else going on for that. So I branched out, finding a circus school and working on my tumbling.

It all petered out a bit as teaching and later pregnancy and motherhood took over my time and energy, but I’ve still found ways to get my fix. Last summer I persuaded Leigh to take me and Arthur to circus camp : we spent a week in the rain in deepest darkest Cornwall juggling and tumbling and hanging from the trapeze.

And I’m back to trampolining too. I couldn’t believe my luck when we moved to Torbay and I found somewhere that was not only prepared to let adults loose on the trampolines but also timed it so the babies could do a gym session too. Arthur’s moved up to the toddler class now, but I still get to turn the world on its head every Friday.

There’s a metaphor in all of this. Something about seeing things from different perspectives, not accepting the common viewpoint, wanting to shake things up until they’re topsy turvey from time to time, just to see what happens. It’s liberating, for the body and for the mind.

U is for upside down.

 

Joining in with The Alphabet Photography Project over at PODcast.