The Spirit of the World

Best of luck Danny, we said, and then we watched in the grip of increasing awe and astonishment as the stadium split open with mesmerising centuries-worth of culture and music that make up the sum of our small Isles, zipping past us in generous and fleeting succession. This was no history lesson but the simple recounting of one nation’s story and its reach to the rest of the globe. From literature and revolution to punk and the parachuting Queen, it was never elitist. With humour and a wink of confidence, it included everyone, and triggered the most amazing once-in-a-lifetime event in the city we love so much. Within minutes, the cynics were silenced. If they didn’t get it, then they had no soul.

And then the sport began. The bells rang out to the world and the joy and spirit of the games seeped onto our streets, along our pavements, down into the Tube, and on to smiling faces. It rode on top of buses, past flags and banners fluttering on every corner. In the parks they spread their picnics, and erected the screens, conjestion scaremongering a distant memory. The arenas were full (well, almost) and voices were lost from cheering, arms aching from waving, but never ever growing tired of it. Thank you, London 2012 – it is a privilege to be just one tiny part of it. 

But what are we going to do when it is all over and the cauldron is extinguished? Simple answer is to carry on living the dream and passing it on. This is our world, our gift, our joy. And the spirit of the world and the Isle of Wonders cannot be snuffed out.

We will remember them

Every evening at the Menin Gate in Ypres, at the going down of the sun, a large crowd gathers in respect and expectation. Every evening, without fail, buglers march out, the crowd falls silent and holds its breath as the proud and mournful Last Post is sounded.

But pride can slip easily into bitterness among the fields of Flanders and the valleys of the Somme. For here the inhumanity of war is uncovered, just as farmers’ ploughs today churn up a chip of backbone, a stick of rib and a curved piece of skull. One hundred years on, shells and bullets, many still live, are also a perpetual harvest. I toured the Western Front to try to understand our nation’s degradation of its youth, but could only scratch the surface of comprehension. I could only stand and stare.

Their names are listed row upon row on the Menin Gate, utterly shocking in their thousands but actually a mere drop in the ocean among the endless cemeteries and battle grounds. The Tommies gave their theatre of war a human and humorous edge, naming places Hellfire Corner, Suicide Road and Blood Alley. They called their tanks Fritz Flatteners. They laughed, of course, or else they died. (After all, it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.)

Stand on the Messines Ridge with binoculars and you can see almost the whole of the Line, stretching from Loos in the south to Passchendaele in the north. And in this benign landscape, force yourself to imagine the filth and the noise of war: the firestorm at Hooge where burning oil was jettisoned over trenches, the poisonous quagmire of Ploegsteert, the violent slaughter in the wire at Beaumont Hammel. In Sanctuary Wood, you can still touch bullet holes in the blasted, ragged trees. Watch the river Somme make its peaceful wide sweep through rolling countryside further south and learn of the revolting carnage at Serre where the mowing down of a generation occurred in approximately ten minutes.

The enormity of the numbers of the dead is beyond belief; the staggering amount who were simply “lost” and unaccounted for driven home by the single and empty word on missing French soldiers' headstones: Inconnu. The monument at Thiepval will leave you gaping and speechless. All these placenames, notorious, stagnant and cold in our collective psyche, should be carved onto every school curriculum.

As the sun goes down over the Western Front, the wind picks up and the grasses rustle but the earth remains silent. And, in the morning, people rebuild their lives. With nonchalant shrugs, farmers erect barns over mine chambers still packed with explosives, they use former dug-outs as wine cellars, they plough up the white bones of century-old youth while birds continue to sing from the hedgerows. Life goes on here because that is what they ceased living for. And they remain in the cemeteries, legions of them, lying perfectly still, perfectly regimented, under pristine headstones.

All seems peaceful on the Western Front. All quiet apart from, of course, the bird song.

Listen without prejudice

When the audio version of A Season of Leaves came out - soon after the book was published – I promptly put my copy of it on the shelf and forgot all about it.
Presented in a lovely case - on 12 CDs no less - the novel is read by actress Anna Bentinck who has done over 800 similar recordings for the BBC. But I shied away from listening to it and left it to gather dust. What stopped me? Well, I do have this thing about reading my own work out loud, so to hear someone else do so would have been excruciating for me - and I’d want to head red-faced for the hills.
However, four years on, after being encouraged by the person who understood my fear but made me do it anyway, I duly uploaded the CDs to my iPod for my daily commute. Once I’d stopped giggling and cringing, I settled into listening to the, believe me, bizarre experience of having my own words relayed back to me and was pleasantly surprised. Anna does not just read the book out loud, she gives the story nuances, pauses and emphasis, exactly how I originally intended. She gives the characters different voices that fit their personalities like a glove. She portrays their humour and their humanity just as I first imagined. And even though I know what’s going to happen next, I am enthralled!
Hearing my words being reborn and the story spinning out, like it did as I wrote it, has given me bags of confidence and a whole new belief in myself. Now, why didn't I do this years ago?

In the deep freeze

We’re breaking records here in Chesham.
December 2010 saw the mercury famously drop to minus 17 (I think it made the One Show), and last night we plumbed the depths to minus 11. It’s something to do with the microclimate that our dear little Chiltern valley creates: sheltered and protected from the wind, temperatures plummet in certain wintry conditions.
This is bad news for the commuter community. The poor old Metropolitan line from Chesham creaks along at the best of times but during a cold snap, it positively cries for help. The trepidation when I leave the house to set off on my epic journey to work in London is tangible. Will I or won’t I make it?
Apart from falling on my btm in treacherous ice outside the station last year (resulting in a bruise the size of a dinner plate), these snowy mornings don’t bode well if you have any self respect or fashion sense. My friends and colleagues arrive at work in neat little coats and ankle boots, having made their way via the toasty Tube or more reliable/convivial train services. I, meanwhile, have left my home attired in layer upon layer as advised and shivered for an hour on an un-heated Met line train to arrive eventually: ruddy cheeked and dressed like a yeti.

I'm back in the room...

And I can’t believe it’s been so long. For those of you who’ve missed me while I retreated into my hermit’s cave, from now on I will try not to be such a lazy blogger.
I’m here to tell you that, despite a rather prolonged radio silence, it’s all been happening behind the scenes.
The good news is I that have a new two-book deal with Allison & Busby (small publisher of big books is their pleasing tagline), which means my second novel The September Garden will at last see the light of day. Publishing date will be this summer (I will of course let you know the exact time and place as soon as I do!).
My retreat from the world of blogging gave me the time to nurture The September Garden (spending a week in blissful Cornwall - read about this in my blog Return to the Honey Pot), reworking the story and bringing it back to life. The result is a novel set in London during the Blitz, in Occupied France and amid the rolling Chiltern hills of Buckinghamshire. It is the story of two cousins who, as squabbling rivals, are thrown together by the outbreak of war. And they fall for the same man, with devastating consequences. As I like to say, if you love romantic,war-time fiction, you have come to the right place.
I am just finishing off the copy editor’s corrections now and this exercise highlighted quite acutely to me my inability to translate English into French properly. As you can guess, it has been a while since I took my French O Level. And the fact it was an O Level gives the game away just that little bit more…

Return to the honey pot

Childhood holidays are always rose-tinted or, in my case sea-blue-tinted, with a touch of golden sand, sweet green pastures and woolly white lambs.
The Cornish farm and seaside holiday is a classic, and it had been mine all the years of my childhood. I will never forget the unconstrained thrill at the first sight of the sea – that surreal blue triangle between a dip in the land. And this was always after a long journey in the back of the car with two older siblings in pre-seatbelt times on the trunk roads of the early 1970s. In those days, we had to leave the London suburbs at two in the morning to get anywhere fast.
Decades later, I was desperate to go back. Cornwall has always been my promised land. But I wasn’t kidding myself. I knew it would be different this time round: they have theme parks and holiday parks and proper by-passes now. But in need of peace, quiet and time to contemplate, I booked myself into a little cottage near Polperro to see if past memories could still cast their spell.
I felt delighted as I drove over from Devon on the Tamar bridge but then had a moment of doubt. Cornwall was all grown up and, contrary to my dream, seemed at first glance to be no different to any other place.
But this feeling didn’t last too long.
Meticulously following the step-by-step directions, I turned off the A road, turned off the B road and immediately found myself in another world entirely. I journeyed along a tiny unclassified lane, trundling between high hedges from which birds darted quite recklessly in front of me. Every now and then I’d catch glimpses of sublime views through farm gates, driving like a nun out of courtesy to the pure beauty of my surroundings. The air grew sweeter, bird song louder, the 21st century receding with every yard I travelled. The lane narrowed, winding tighter, as if it had been laid out for the little people. I found myself deeper and deeper within a secret wooded valley. Trees embraced the lane, meeting overhead; thick moss, ferns and ivy clothed the dry stone walls that reared up either side, threatening to scrape the paintwork. Yet on I went, plunging through the green darkness of an ancient verdent tunnel.
And then I burst back out into sunlight. I stopped at the crossroads; a tiny settlement of granite-built cottages perched on the valley side. I was looking at a scene that had not changed for centuries. And around the corner, my destination: Old Lanwarnick, a Domesday Book-listed farmhouse and its cluster of converted cottages and barns.
I pulled up outside my cottage, named the Honey Pot, by a patch of wild pink foxgloves and switched off the engine. The first thing I heard, apart from the silence of deep countryside settling down like a comforting quilt, was the gentle buzzing of the bees. Life will be sweet in the honey pot.

Love letter to the city of Sydney

Dear Sydney,

How do I love you? Let me count the ways:

1. Inside your magnificent harbour, your sheltered beaches are shaded by gum trees and shallow waves lick gently at soft sand. Boats bob and set sail in the calm waters of inlets and bays, while ferries chug languidly from point to point.

2. Outside your magnificent harbour, along the rocky Pacific coast, your beaches are crashed by ferocious breakers and surfers float on their boards and wait, wait, long into the sunset for that last, longed-for exhilerating rip curl.

3. Your terraced houses of Paddington and Darlinghurst, with their pretty ironwork balconies, are cute, compact and very desirable. Palm and jacaranda trees line the narrow cobbled streets and trumpet-shaped peachy flowers drop onto pavements.

4. Your Federation houses of Randwick and Clovelly resemble Edwardian villas, slumbering in sleepy suburbs amid parakeet-song, the symphony of cicadas, and the splash of a thousand swimming pools.

5. Your Opera House and Bridge are icons to the world. Back-lit by fireworks exploding with Aussie confidence and optimism on New Year’s Eve, the spectacle brings smiles of wonder all round and tears to my eyes.

6. Your outdoor cinema in Centennial Park forces the film to become the side show. Lying on my bean bag as the sun goes down I watch beyond the screen as the dusky air turns pink and your orange city lights wink to the horizon. Huge fruit bats, black against the sky, flap silently overhead on the balmy evening breeze, becoming temporary citizens as they roost for the night.

7. Your Centennial Park in the dark, where a walk home is scented by fresh, astringent ever-present eucalyptus, the warm air alive with night creatures, their rhythmic chirping and mysterious rustling; and the ponds resounding to the piping, primeval frog chorus.

8. But there’s just one thing… the heat and violence of your sun is like a demon on my shoulder, difficult to cope with and likely to cause an argument. Factor 50 ruins my clothes and makes my face shiny. However, all is forgiven when in the late afternoon, your sun mellows and sinks a degree. Your light turns golden, slants through the leaves and sparkles seductively on the water.

9. Cafes, Cab Sav, markets, parkland, sailing, coastal walks, shops, sushi, swimming, wildlife, bars, Bondi!

Sydney, will our long-distant relationship ever last? No worries!

Love from Catherine