life keeps happening

My diligence slipped again, and this blog has gone unloved and unattended for over a month. 

Between getting my book funded and written, understanding my new job and moving to London, there never seems the appropriate moment to sit back and pour it out here. Throw the words of my life into the world and see what makes sense. Pausing for reflection these days only leads to yet another mental to-do list. It's not so much reflecting as trying to figure out what comes next. 

It's different. I'm beginning to enjoy this life-in-progress thing. I do miss whimsically staring out to the North Sea and wondering idly if that was it. I was doomed to sit on the edge of Scotland, jobless and watching the waves. I miss the sound of the sea, but not so much the sense of doom. 

Next weekend I must rent a van and move out of the flat in St Andrews. That's probably the largest and most angst-laden item on the to-do list. No idea where I'm going to put all my shit once it's down here, but there you go. My flatmate's been diligent in steadily reducing his possessions over the last few months and I have not. I have a library of books, a library of DVDs and god knows what else. Boxes of outdated computer kit and a shoebox of birthday cards going back to the last century - just the essentials, really. At least I'm not buried under broken old laptops anymore. I did manage to get rid of a few items along the way. 

Well, as far as angst-laden goes, there's that and writing the book. It's coming along, peaks and troughs and whatnot. The lovely folks at my publisher, Unbound, are incredibly helpful. There has been a remarkable number of people offering to help and very kindly buying the book. Friends going back to my youth and complete strangers have all become patrons. It's humbling in a sense. But I'm greedy. I want it fully funded so that it's one less thing on the to-do list. 

I'll be around here more. I feel there's a lot of writing to be done, in all directions.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

salt & old vines

I'm back in London now, after a good two weeks working vintage at Mas Cristine. There's that post-vintage feeling, where my body heals itself while my heart and mind miss the work, the sunshine and the friendships. My hands and fingers are still leathery and calloused and a touch arthritic. I open and close them for a few minutes in the morning to get them working again. 

I need them working, as I've a lot of typing to do. You see, I've a book to finish. A book that has a publisher and everything. It's a story about wine, which is appropriate. A story about making wine down where the mountains meet the sea.

The publishers are the lovely folks at Unbound. They're a new-fangled publisher and raise support for their books in a crowd-fund-y kind of way. Most of their authors are terribly exciting and some even very famous. How they found space for an aspiring writer and hopeless wine nerd is beyond me, but I'm happy they did. 

So if you read this blog and would like to buy my book, please sign up to support the project here. You get your name in the book and everything. Isn't that exciting?

some spare vintage thoughts

I'm sat in the Café Sola in Collioure at the moment, sipping coffee and a mineral water. The mineral water is there to wash to the taste of the coffee out of my mouth. French coffee is awful. I complain about it where ever I write: this blog, twitter; my disdain for it even gets a mention in my new book. I've not written a letter to The Times yet, but I might.

Outside the café, car horns sound in celebration of a wedding. It's a local thing, apparently, to drive around after a wedding service, blaring horns with gleeful disregard for those who may not give a shit about their nuptials. It seems to only end when a mother with young children at naptime threatens the lead driver with an ancient rifle usually reserved for hunting wild boar.

Today's a rare day off. Can't believe how fast it's gone. I'm back to London on Wednesday, and I don't think we'll have done any red at Mas Cristine by then. It's been a funny harvest thus far. Some spectacular fruit, some not so much, and not a lot of juice per ton. Sad to miss the reds. I've not even been to Banyuls and Coume del Mas yet.

I should be working on the book during these rare times I get a chance to write, but like running I feel I need a little warm up first. It amazes me how the world goes on while the harvest goes on. I've missed the RNC and the DNC, the continued Red Sox collapse, the Paralympics, cabinet reshuffles, sunny weather in London, dreadful weather in Scotland, the end of the Fringe, Freshers Week in St Andrews and goodness knows what else. It's not terribly concerning, just curious how much happens regardless of whether I have the time to pay attention.

I'll rejoin the world shortly. Too soon, as usual.

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south and then further south

The train's sat in Kirkaldy for longer that it should be. Bright August sun pours through the window and the surface of the Forth dances and glimmers in the morning light. A few cargo ships sit scattered on the water.

It's been a long week. Good food and old friends, fine wine and gallons of beer, all shared and some spilled. Laughter so strong and hard that you clutch your chest and fight to get air into your lungs.

I see across to the Lothians now and to Arthur's Seat, sat to the left of Edinburgh, dwarfing the city.

There were birthdays and singing and dancing. I woke to the sun and the cat asleep at the foot of my bed. I suffered only one or two hangovers, but maybe deserved a few more.

One story ended the only way it could, no matter how much I wanted to rewrite it. It's not a tale to tell, but I'll turn it over in my head for a time to come.

Loads of people board the train at Inverkeithing. I don't blame them. I'd get out of Inverkeithing too.

London this evening and then France tomorrow. I fly to Toulouse and then head down to Collioure to make wine for my fifth vintage. I bought new boots and took my wine-stained shirts out of the closet. I'm bringing good whisky with me, and a thirst for good wine.

We're now sat for too long at Haymarket. Still miss the Caley Ale House. The gap where it stood looks simply as though it's been erased, and never was.

I've been moving a lot recently. South and north like a yo-yo, and soon even further afield. I'm bored of packing and fretting about what I've forgotten. But I like the sense of motion, the sense of movement and progression. Another mile travelled, another blank page filled. New stories to start, perhaps without the sad ache of inevitability.

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should be

I should be editing right now. The document's opened on not one, but two screens. The task itself is not a major overhaul, but a minor tweak. Well, two minor tweaks, really. Merely a matter of a sentence or two. Outside, the sea is silver and calm, its waves minuscule and constant. Inside, the cat refuses to eat spiders but will devour mosquitos, moths and daddy longlegs (the British ones, with wings; American daddy longlegs are themselves arachnids and thus would not appeal to the cat). 

I like the edits. I feel no sense of injured pride that my publisher read my work and said 'that's great, but…'. Well, none right now. I'm sure that with the passage of time disagreements and bruised egos will run rampant. But for now it's a nice feeling to have someone read my stuff and make the odd suggestion. It helps that they're additions, rather than subtractions. 

I should be editing right now, but I keep looking out the window at the calm of the sea and feeling the light sting of jealousy.

little progress

I made a mistake a few months ago. I was chatting to my publisher and he asked me how the writing was going. I told him it was going great, and that you can always tell when the writing is going great because I invariably am writing more of everything. I blog more, I email more, I scribble in my notebooks more and, of course, I write the book more. The urge to pound out prose doesn't stick to one particular project; words spill out onto everything. It's a nice feeling. 

Of course, since that little chat, I've not blogged or written very much of anything. He's not asked me about progress on the book since then either. He can easily check this blog and the wine blog and see ever-lengthening time between updates and surmise that there's been a bit of a lull. It means I don't have to stammer out excuses, at least.

I can't attribute the lull to any one particular thing. It's a convergence of scattered bits and pieces that drag my fingers away from the keys and my pens. Some good things; I finally signed my publishing contract for the new top secret book that will be revealed imminently. Some bad things that will go unmentioned here, but cause me to furrow my brow and sigh with all the world's weight when I think no one is listening. 

I'm in Scotland at the moment, until Sunday. The cat's good company and the weather's almost summer-like. I know so few people here now that it's easy to hide and write. The lull's retreating, and hopefully the words will return. 

missing the cat

I'm sitting in my room in London with comically large headphones on, writing, listening to tunes and keeping one eye on the Red Sox game. The game's muted; Fox has the broadcast and I can't take that level of stupid on my own time. I say it's my room. It's not, really. My room is in Scotland. I'm in the room I stay in while staying at my parent's house. It serves mostly as my mom's office. On the shelves next the desk I see a picture of her with her sister and a card I sent her for Mothers Day. But there's a bed and I sleep in it, so for the time being it's my room. 

It's a job that brings me south, a temporary contract at a small and rather lovely wine company in West London. It looks like this is the beginning of a more significant move for me, back to a city I used to know better. There's a lot to do in the meantime. I've got this job, I've got a book to write, I've got to fly to France at the end of August, all the time looking for a permanent job and splitting time between Scotland and London.

I've got a page in my notebook devoted to a scrawled calendar, dotted with question marks and asterisks. There are can't-miss events and shouldn't-miss birthdays. If I've not looked at the page for a day or two, it takes me awhile to decipher. Such is the next three months. Written on paper and sound in theory, but nothing set in stone.

It will all be fine. I'm not stressed, though going from unemployed and the odd bar shift to this is certainly a change. It's a change for the better. But I miss the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves and my cat asleep at my feet.

the big soak and back again

There should have been a middle post. A post from the train south, a post from London, and then a post from the train back north. But I'm on the train back north and there was no post from London. So now the flatlands rush by the window and the memories of the last five days skip by along with them. My finger traces the bit I missed shaving this morning. I wonder if it's too OCD to grab my razor out of my suitcase, nip into the WC and sort those three or four of whiskers out once and for all. I decide against it. The train is not entirely stable and I'm pretty sure my punishment for such fussy vanity would be for a sudden jolt to result in me gouging a chunk out of my cheek.

A few memories draw a smile. Cowering under a gazebo, catching up with friends, hiding from the rain and swirling a glass of Burgundy while toddlers play and shout in the bouncy castle. Standing on a terrace by the Thames, sipping a pint and watching the party boats slip by under Hammersmith Bridge whilst the sun begins to set. Sitting in a pub with my publisher as he scanned the first scraps of my book with enthusiastic approval. A long awaited interview, with a long awaited result.

Home is always a mixed bag, though, and the passage of time tells more in some places than others.

Things are looking up, though, and I'll be back soon.

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worn path

I've lost count of how many times I've made this trip over the last 18 years. It's homeward bound either way, north or south. Southbound today, the countryside looking particularly green. A vivid emerald that only comes when the rain has poured forth for weeks. At this time of year, the barley and wheat fields that cover these parts alternate between green and silver; it looks like someone is growing gemstones.

Like Treebeard, going south always feels to me like going downhill. I've no idea why. The stretch between Leuchars and Edinburgh always feels like an unnecessary preamble. Like the overlong introduction to a book that you've started but wish you hadn't. The introduction, not the book. The journey doesn't really start until Edinburgh, once the commuters and day-trippers have been shaken off.

I've written down a lot of these trips, here on the blog and in notebooks and sometimes just scribbled into the back of my mind. It's strange that something so familiar should always make me want to write about it. But then I'm ceaselessly noting the rain and haar, so maybe it's not so strange at all.

My coachmates seem either very old or too young. There's a guy with a Red Sox cap on and what seems like a hundred grandparents, aunties and uncles. Some orange ladies got on board at Kirkaldy. Their fake tan is too loud for the quiet coach.

Between Edinburgh and Berwick we hug the coast and as always I promise myself to return here in a car, with a camera and a notebook, and write and snap and take in this stretch of coast that seems a gift of the sea to the land. No one can see this strip of shoreline and not be moved. The surf laps at the front steps of a ruinous cottage.

We quickly traverse the north and reach the middle in York. It's all flat and landlocked from here to London. The rains have turned most of it into fenland, though some it was like that already. I wanted to write more, but instead I stared though the window and watched the words slip by with the country outside.

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discard pile and pirate ghosts

My university degree is laying on the floor next to a bookshelf made out of an old wooden wine box. It's protected in its tube, the lid adorned with the St Andrews coat of arms. The tube is dark blue, maybe navy. I should move it before the cat decides it's a toy. It's just the standard piece of paper, not the elaborate illuminated text. I keep meaning to buy one of the nice ones, the grand parchment announcing to the world that, yes, I did get a degree, even if it took me a little longer than most. The intent is there, but it gets pushed back for things like bills and wine.

It deserves better. It shouldn't be on the floor. It should be somewhere safe, or framed. I look around my room at all the things more deserving of the discard pile and they're plentiful and daunting. I fear the clear out because I'm close to chucking it all, save the books. Well, the books, the camera and the computer. It's just doubt that stops me, a creeping worry that something will go that shouldn't. It's ridiculous, a hoarding cocktail of cowardice and sentimentality. Somewhere in here is a box of birthday cards going back a decade. 

Tomorrow I'm off to London, delaying decisions about the fate of the majority of my useless belongings for a few more days. Of course, there's a garage in London with even more of my stuff in it, but it's hidden so it can't haunt me. 

St Andrews sits under a blanket of haar, and has done for days now. Writers are never supposed to start with the weather, but in Scotland it is inevitable that it should show up eventually. I'm pleased I was able to hold out until the fourth paragraph. With the haar comes a pervading damp, a cool wetness that reaches everywhere. It clings to the pillows and sometimes I wake in the night, cold but sweating, feeling as though a fever's broken. 

I used to tell tourists tall tales about the haar. They would pop into the shop to browse for wine, whisky or beer, and they would marvel at the fog that rolled in from the sea. Bright sunshine one second and a cold grey duvet the next. I would pour them a sample dram and explain that the sea fog on the east coast of Scotland was called the haar. 

'Oh, really? Why's it called that?' they would ask.

'Well, it's quite the legend. You see, the waters around here are treacherous, with hidden reefs and dangerous headlands. And when that fog would roll in, without warning, there were many a ship wrecked on the rocks. And many of those ships were pirate ships, as they used to prey on the traders sailing in and out of the towns along the Fife coast. But being strangers, they didn't know the coast as well as they should, and couldn't navigate its perilous, grasping shores. And so they were wrecked, the fog silencing their cries. And to this day, it's said, when the fog rolls in, so too do the spirits of those drowned and wrecked pirates, seeking once and for all to escape the sea's pull. And as they drift in with the mist, you can hear their faint cry, "hhhhaaaaaarrrrrr"… and that's why it's called the haar.'

I don't know if they believed me or not, but the story got better every time I told it.