a greyer shade of winter

I was writing something about the rain but it took too long and the rain stopped and all of the sudden it didn’t seem terribly relevant anymore. I was going to write a lot of things. I’ve got the scribbles in notebooks and snippets in note apps on my phone and iPad to prove it. Reading them now they look surreal, without context. Some draw forth more recognition; a sense of the time and the place and the feeling. But for the most part it’s sentences and phrases unanchored by meaning or memory. Some are tasting notes for wines I’ll never drink again. 

There’s one notebook with a bunch of diary entries. I used to write in it while propping up a bar where a girl I had a crush on pulled pints. I would drink and write and nod and smile as she drew me a fresh beer and then poured a glass of whisky on the side. The beer was hit or miss. The lines weren’t terribly clean. If the bar got too busy I’d put the pen and notebook away for fear a pint might slop all over my unreadable script. 

Once I sat in a pizza place writing in that same notebook and a pretty waitress complimented me on my handwriting. I think that might have been the only time anyone had done such a thing. I drank Peroni Gran Riserva and ate a calzone on my lonesome, and someone pretty liked my writing, or its aesthetic at least. That waitress lives in South London now, with some friends of mine. She’s not a waitress anymore. 

In Autumn 2007, before it got cold, I sat with my laptop in the afternoon sun in the ruins of the cathedral and rewrote a chapter of my novel. From time-to-time I’d pop my head up for a breather catch the odd look from a bemused tourist. I disappeared into the words that afternoon. 

Nine or so months before that, I sat on a couch at Naughton, typing on the same laptop, and wrote the last page of the first draft of that book. It was New Year’s Eve, and about an hour or so before the party was due to start. I opened my last bottle of 1985 Dom Perignon to celebrate. It tasted wonderful. 

This morning I dragged the big purple binder that holds the draft and notes for my novel into the office. I grabbed a few notebooks and started flipping through the ageing pages. Far away from my desk, final touches are being applied to what will be my first ever published book. It should (knock on wood) go to press sometime next week. There’s nothing else for me to do with it. 

And so I brush off memories and pages, excavate old writing, looking for what to write next, and beginning to feel both excited and terrified by pages that need filled with words.

bst

It's usually around this time of year that I do a big wool wash. All the winter jumpers and scarves go into the machine, I double check the detergent to make sure it's the wooly one, and then double check the setting on the machine to make sure it's the wooly one, and away we go. I'd lay them flat to dry where I could, but usually just draped them on a drying rack and hope they didn't get too deformed. Once they were dry, I'd put them away for six months or so. They weren't needed anymore. Spring and summer were for cotton and linen, not wool. 

The clocks went forward in the wee hours last night and it's British Summer Time now, in name only. It's too cold to wash the woollens and put them away for a couple of seasons. The sun's out and glorious, but brings little heat.

I came down with another cold. Or maybe it was the remains of the last one, come back to haunt me. It knocked me out a bit, seemed to put everything on pause: it's still winter; there's still writing to finish. 

Instead of the wool wash, I tidied the house from top to bottom. The sort of thing writers do to not write. As well as the house, I tidied my desk, finding too many card receipts for too much money from too many bars. I chucked all the loose sterling change into a jar and piled all my Euro cents into neat stacks for the next to trip to France, whenever that may be. I have no idea where I've put my US currency, nor do I know when I'll need it next.

I like writing at a tidy desk, but I can write at a messy one, if needs be. Vonnegut rails against the idea of 'perfect writing conditions', and he's right. All you need is a certain loneliness, and the need to fill that void with words. No other conditions really necessary.

Except maybe a pen, paper, or a computer. 

 

Buy my book. Please.

hubris

It serves me right. I was getting cocky. Oh, sure, I knocked on wood when I mentioned it, and rolled my eyes in the I-hope-I'm-not-jinxing-this kind of way. But I thought I got away with it. I believed this winter would leave me alone. But no. I'm on the lemsip and sudafed. My chest feels of sandpaper and sinuses are gripped by a vice. I've not spoken yet today, but feel I'll be all Louis Armstrong when the words come out. 

I'm still going to work. There's wine to taste. Just hoping I can taste it. 

in storage

I pulled in with the van just before ten on Tuesday and unpacked it into my parent's garage by myself. It took awhile, but nowhere near as long as loading it did. I put the heavy boxes on the bottom and the few light ones on top. While I dread moving again, and want a bit of a break, I hope they're not in there too long. 

The small amount I did bring into the house is still packed. That's a job for a rainy Sunday.

Last night I walked to the pub before going home. It was quiet and candlelit and both the fireplaces crackled in the dim light. The staff were a touch too chatty, but it didn't matter. I found a small corner and wrote and thought. From where I sat, the pub could have been empty, which is just what I wanted. I was going to go home after two pints, but a good song came on so I stayed for a third.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

shire horses

The field on the left used to hold horses. Driving by on my way to Naughton, I slowed and glanced and smiled when I saw them. Sometimes, on the way back (when the field was on the right), I'd pull over and stand by the fence and they would wander over, hoping I had a snack for them. Their breath heavy, they'd mumble and mutter their horsey chat and nuzzle and batter my shoulders, hoping I would draw from my pocket a sugar cube, a polo mint, or a carrot. I never remembered to bring a snack, and as I got back into my car they no doubt wondered why I bothered to visit at all. I thought they were Clydesdales; they were certainly some manner of shire horse. Long manes hid their eyes and shaggy hair adorned their dinner platter-sized feet.

A few years ago I drove by and the shire horses were gone. As time passed the field on the left filled with trailers and now there is a small hamlet of shoeboxes on breeze blocks. It's a stark contrast to the surrounding countryside, especially when compared to the previous residents. This development lacks a deft touch. The land still looks like a building site and seems a tumour amongst the surrounding scenery.

Passing last month I noticed the next plot colonised as well. More trailers, more breeze blocks, more mud and more detritus strewn across raw earth instead of grass. Walls and an entrance gate far more grand than what they guard had been erected.

I could turn this into a metaphor about the passage of time; a resentful missive on how progress is a mixed blessing. I could draw contrasts of my own hopes and dreams and the stark realities they bump up against. How life is so rarely what we imagine it should be, and regardless of what's in our heart, the world moves on whether we like it or not. Those things are all true. The connections are all there in my head. But in the midst of all that is sadness. My heart sinks a bit when I drive by the field on the left now. Shoeboxes stood on breeze blocks are a poor replacement for horses stood on shaggy feet.

lost and found

The sun's setting just after four at the moment. It pops its head up just before eight in the morning. At the moment. The former will get earlier and the latter later before the solstice and the days once again stretch themselves out of the dark ages. After eighteen winters in Scotland (give or take one or two) you would think the pervasive dark would have no impact, or at least less impact. But no. By two-thirty I know the darkness is drawing in and I flail to finish something, anything, before it falls entirely, and feel when it does that no matter what, I could have or should have done more before the pale light departed. And so the Scottish winter feels like time unfulfilled and unfinished.

It's ridiculous, I know. The marvel of electricity allows bountiful productivity long after the sun sets. And I do work in the dark, often longer than I should. But it feels different. It's got an academic feel to it. Like doing homework or pulling that all-nighter on the essay that you need to get in by nine the next morning. Whether that's because the time of year isn't just winter but also the peak of a school year is the kind of chicken/egg pondering that I don't give a shit about. Though I'm certain that the academic feel makes it far easier to make excuses, to push it aside and crack open a bottle of something.

I can't remember which particular Scottish winter it was, but two or three of them ago I pushed my book aside. Oh, I fiddled with submission chapters, snippets. I got angst-ridden about cover letters for agents and would every couple of months or so work myself into a state about getting it sorted and would do the bare minimum before the sun set and I pushed it all aside again and distracted myself with something else, some other idea still embryonic in my head. People asked about it and I shrugged about it being kind of finished and not really feeling it at the moment and all the other reasons a school kid would put off their homework until the last possible second.

It's a strange thing to do with a book you've written. It sat in a large purple binder - sometimes next to my desk, sometimes next to my bed, untouched but to move it from one place to another. It lost meaning for me. Just a binder and not the words inside.

Last week a friend took me to see Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen's latest is charming, whimsical and, while not landmark cinema, deals with a time close to my heart. Regardless of the premise or even the movie itself, it reminded me of the writing I loved. Books of grand stories and the human condition, writers shaping words to capture a world growing bigger and just beginning to chronicle those changes. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner and Chandler and Penn Warren and Ellison and the others who embraced prose without forgetting poetry and raised the novel to high art. People who made words dance in their simplest (Hemingway) and most complex (Faulkner) arrangements. Passages that leave you breathless with their poise and perfection, winded by the words on the page. Stories so heart-rending you can't bear to turn the page and prose so compelling that you can't bear to not turn it. Books that you hold in your hands for long minutes after they're finished, heart beating strong. They've left you full and empty all at once.

Those are the fucking books they wrote.

Those are the books worth writing.

And so I sit in the dark, surrounded by drafts and rewrites and notebooks and outlines and I have found my book again and am wrestling with the words inside. The days are short but then so are most things. I cannot write the books they wrote, I can only write mine.

But I can make mine worth writing.

central heating and nostalgia

Last night the St Louis Cardinals won the World Series and today my flatmate turned the heating on. The leaves and lack of frost suggest that autumn has itself a few more weeks, but I'm suspicious. Already my thoughts have turned to winter, with all of November still to come. I crave stews and chilli and roasts and deep red wines that stick to the ribs and crunch like kindling mixed with dry leaves.

At last count, I have about six unwritten projects and one large item to edit. There's a script, a novel, a novella and scattered blog posts that may not seem like priority, but still serve the important role of keeping words flowing. I'm out shape, you see. The words are not flowing. They are a tumult in my head, of course, but I'm not getting them out to where they belong. All my blogs have suffered, my writing has suffered and with them both perhaps a bit of my sanity as well.

Such frustration requires escape and often I find myself lost in old photos or old scribblings. Sometimes both. Nostalgia strikes hard when the future is obscured. It clarifies the past and polishes it as well, giving every little nugget of memory - every warm moment - an added sheen. Because it seems so clear, so close, so grows the illusion that things were clear at the time. So follows a belief in the past's inherent innocence, as clarity quickly becomes purity in the mind's eye and soon you look out and see behind you a perfect narrative. And as soon as you see it as such you begin to wonder where it changed, how did such a perfect past lead to an imperfect and mostly uncertain future?

The radiator's kicking off a nice heat and the cat sleeps atop a pile of my jumpers at the bottom of my bed. The wind isn't howling, yet. The clocks go back in an hour or so. Tomorrow I'll run and bake bread and try, with some effort, to write.

a morning in winter

My pillow seems to have greatly expanded gravitational pull these days. Everything is heavier near my bed, including myself. The grey at my window announcing morning does little to lighten the matter and rising to face the day must break down into small, incremental phases. The cat disapproves. He feels I should be leaping up with vigour that mirrors his own. He climbs over the peaks my limbs form in the duvet and presses his face to mine, eager and clumsy. His purr is an odd noise, almost silent, internalized. Pedey head butts me and then clambers over my face to lap the water from the pint jug I keep next my bed. The water thievery is the last straw and I pick him up or just push him, meowing in protest, off the bed.

Thus the first phase of getting up is complete and I sit myself up and rub my eyes and run my hands through hair that is no longer there. The grey light is brighter, though no less grey. I check my phone and iPad and might make a move against someone in Words with Friends (a scrabble knock off I'm constantly losing). My legs and shoulders are sore. I make fists with my toes and stretch out. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed to stand up shouldn't take as much concentration as it does. I grab the cat-tainted pint of water and stand up, not taking a sip. The first few steps fall as though my legs are in braces, or should be. The cat couldn't be happier at my resurrection, believing the sole purpose of my animated state is to feed him. He races underfoot, howling, delighted to have a feeder and a playmate. I'm delighted if I can avoid tripping over the wee shite.

If I've dreamt, I'll ponder them, trying to draw details back from the recesses of my subconscious and attempt to assemble some manner of linear narrative to the abstract. I delude myself into thinking this is a good morning brain exercise, but all it tends to do is confuse me.

Coffee becomes incredibly important about now. Espressos. Or perhaps a run before coffee. The road splits, and this is where everyday is not the same.

Today I ran. It was still dark when I set out. Frost coated the roads and sidewalks and grassy embankments. The sun rose more in the south than east and the sea sat calm beneath it. I could see my breath and by the end my whole body steamed as though I'd just been removed from an oven.

I staggered home and the day started.

ice crystals on pavement

It's too cold to run right now. The sun shines bright on the frost-crusted pavement and I doubt the grip of my feet upon the earth. Silhouettes walk their dogs on the beach, bundled tight. Every silhouette has their personal cloud of mist that trails them like steam on a locomotive. I can imagine the crunch of frozen grass as one of those silhouettes takes their wee Scotty dog along the lawn that runs behind the beach for a couple of hundred yards. The lawn used to be a putting green, though I can't remember if it was 9 or 18 holes. I never used it myself. I tend to use the Himalayas, adorning St Andrews' more famous beach, and most famous golf course. It's about as close to golfing as I intend to get.

Some people are golf people and define themselves as such. It permeates their conversation with other golf people and frequently spills over, inflicting itself upon the silent and weary who don't and never will give a shit about golf. I'm one of those people. Living for so long in a town synonymous with golf has lead me to define myself - to some extent - as not a golf person. This troubles me somewhat, as defining oneself as what they are not seems negative, and vaguely smacks of scientific method. Still, I find it necessary when my own countrymen, visiting to pay homage to this most ancient and adored bastion of golf, stare at me aghast while I explain to them that I don't play their precious game.

It's too cold to play golf anyway. Or even have a leisurely stroll along the putting green. My window has a new frame, an edge of sparkling frost that the heat from my room has as yet been unable to melt. Inside this cocoon of warmth I've meandered through iTunes, putting together a morning playlist: a long overdue endeavour. There are many songs perfect to wake up to though the fuzziness of morning means that often I just hit any old shit. Playlists like this are made on mornings like this. The sunshine cannot but wake you, entice you outside. But the bitter cold halts you in your tracks. Awake and ready but trapped. The playlist is ecclectic, odd even. AC/DC and Nina Simone, Beastie Boys and The Beatles. I'm liking it so far though. Liking the jump from 60's soul to 80's rock to 90's punk rap and back to pop again. I air guitar and sing along while my fingers bang the keys. I'm still in my pj's.

The temperature's risen from -3 to -1. That's celcius. I switch back and forth between celcius and farenheit. When it's cold I feel celcius is more descriptive. 0 is freezing. It's apt. In the summer, however, it falls short. Farenheit must be called on to provide a scale for the warmth. It's hard to think of it as warm when celcius claims it's only 25.

There are more silhouettes wandering the beach now, some with dogs and some without. The frost covers the beach as well, the sand more silver than gold. The lobster boats are all out, checking their traps no doubt. The thought makes me hungry. Munching fresh lobster while looking out over a sun-drenched frozen beach, sipping white burgundy and enjoying the banter of friends.

Most of the lobsters go to Spain, which is of use to no one, except perhaps the Spanish. So I munch on their manchego, pata negra and chorizo while they crunch our crustaceans. It still doesn't seem quite a fair trade, but maybe that's just me wanting something for nothing.

The frost doesn't seem to be melting, in spite of the sun's best efforts. My ecclectic new playlist just pumped out James Brown, Van Halen and Pulp. My mouth's watering but I don't want to eat just yet. The silhouettes seem to prefer the far end of the beach to the near.

It's too cold for a run, but I'll go anyway.