Category: Life online
Ladies who lunched
Bloggers of the world united yesterday when I met up with Meg and Letha in London. We had a wonderful time, running around Oxford Street, having a boozy lunch in Carluccio’s, scoring the obligatory celebrity sighting (Naomi Campbell in Topshop surrounded by an impenetrable throng of minions), buying glittery girlie eye shadows and swooning over the luscious scents in Liberty. We ended up in Soho where we drank more wine, ate more food and fell in love with each other a bit more… in short, it was the perfect day (and my two beautiful friends are as gorgeous and inspiring in real life as they are on their blogs).
If I had a garden…
…I would want it to look like this. My sister pointed me in the direction of this illustrator’s delicious work and it’s so vibrant and colourful, I want the world to look like this. If you haven’t already picked up on my subtle clues, I love my sister very much. I have known her since she was floating in our mother’s stomach and I thank the stars every night that she chose to be my sister, my little brave daisy waving to me from the garden of our shared life. This year, in my birthday card, she wrote: “I love you more than you could ever imagine. My life would never have been so good without you holding my hand along the way. So now it’s my turn, and I’ll never let go…” I think what upsets me the most about our father being such a fool (and I want to write ****, but that’s my angry teenage self trying to get some airtime) is that he doesn’t know my sister. He is missing out on so much…
Over the last few days we’ve been talking a lot about blogs as she’s thinking about setting up her own, as a way to get the creative juices flowing in the right direction. I think this is a marvelous idea and am encouraging her in true pushy-big-sister style! How I wish I could paint what I see in my head like she does. I paint with words – always have done – but oh, how I want to scoop up handfuls of paint and smear it over the walls. To surround myself with Pollock-esque splatters and Dali dreams. I love words, I love stringing them together, letting them run over the page, crawl up my arm and whisper in my ear, but sometimes a black and white page just doesn’t cut it. Of course the irony is I did go to art college – i can life draw with the best of them! – but my sketch books were always so dry, my paintings so contrived. I think it’s very indicative of me that I write my journals in large Moleskine notebooks, serious hard black covers concealing tear splats and scribblings. I let the colour run riot in my home instead – creaking antiques next to a Tretchikoff print; red lamps by yellow sixties decanters; chocolate silk cushions against a blood-red throw. And books – have I mentioned the books? Piles and shelves and Eiffel Towers of them, so many I have to wonder if they are the ballast keeping me on the planet.
But I digress. This evening I’m simply frustrated. I want to finish this article and file it. I want to have time to get on with TB. I want to paint like Abigail; I want to rip off my clothes and run in the streets. Just as the skin on your arm itches when the cast that has supported your broken limb is due to come off, I think I too am healing. Maybe I should buy a sketchbook and see what happens… I’m still scared to go outside, but I’m starting to think it might be fun to be in that Technicolor garden.
** Sending love to Deirdre **
Setting sail into the unknown
‘I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I begin to look at it, until it shines.’
~ Emily Dickinson
I’ve called this blog ink on my fingers as that really does sum up where i am in my life right (write) now. I’m living by the sea on the south coast of England – living by myself, I should add, the most positive life-affirming thing i think I have ever done – trying to keep the wolf from the door by writing articles for magazines and websites, while making my brain expand and contract as I write my book. Ahh yes, The Book…. the thing/object/dream/cathartic exercise i have been working on for the last five months… i have a sneaking suspicion that TB will be creeping into these postings as i get into my stride. perhaps i’ll turn into Charles Dickens and share a chapter at a time, or more likely, i’ll send out little snippets, like butterflies into the ether and see what comes back. i look forward to connecting with other souls with inky fingers.
The first six chapters are with my agent now, a wonderfully feisty Irish woman who i have complete faith in, and if all goes well I’ll be in London next week to meet with her so we can roll up our sleeves and plot the next stage – to find the right publisher. But in truth that feels like a dream – to get the work published and in readers’ hands would be amazing, but before that can happen I know I have many more red-wine-and-cigarette fuelled nights ahead of me, with ink on my fingers and pieces of paper strewn over my living room floor (literally cutting and pasting, with scissors and sellotape, has proved to be the best way to focus the mind when the words start swimming across the monitor.)
so I spend all day writing – writing articles, writing TB, writing in my diary, writing lists of things I should be doing, will be doing, want to be doing – and now, at last, I’ll be writing here too. The photo is a painting my beautiful sister did for me as a christmas present – the way she sees me writing, with my head lost in thought. I’ve always been in awe of her talent, what a gift to be able to put what you see in your head down on paper – words never feel quite the same.
I’ve found so much inspiration from reading other’s blogs that the temptation to join in and get cosy in my own corner of cyber space was just too irresistible. of course, whether I write anything profound, that helps and inspires, or just plain amuses, remains to be seen.
but it’s exciting to see how this new project will grow. It also feels strange to be writing for/to readers who can leave their comments (and please do!) – you get used to writing anonymous words for magazine readers, where you don’t have to put yourself into the text – and I’ve kept a diary since I was eleven, a conversation that I don’t think will ever end – but a blog is different, and as I’ve read more of them over the last few months I’ve come to see that there is such an incredible network of like-minded souls out there, a real community of artists, writers, dreamers and believers all sharing their thoughts and lives. So here I am, cup of rooibos tea by my keyboard, sun shining through the window, ready to set sail into the unknown.
~welcome to my blog~
