This week I braved the early morning M25 and set off to Rochester, Kent to talk to the WI. This was booked months ago, the first of many talks this year and so it set the standard.
What a lovely year I have in store - a warm welcome, coffee and cakes, an attentive audience – what more could you wish for on a cold February morning? It makes up all the lonely hours sitting in front of a screen, trying to reason with characters who will not behave as I expect and unlike me, aren’t trying to follow the plot.
I’ve had one very truculent character this week. Her name is Tina and my plan was for her to have a bit part in this book. Tina is a Muriel Spark character, unreliable, delusional and gloriously self absorbed. I only needed her to answer the phone and stay quietly in the background while I figure out how to weave a backstory into the present predicament. Our Tina has other plans. She’s one woman hissy fitting hussy and I cannot keep her down. Six solid hours with her on Monday and I needed the WI, and the coffee and the cakes to restore my sanity.
Thank God for the WI. I look forward to to the next talk.
March 9, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Wow – here is another blast from the past for you… Not sure if you remember me, but I was one of your pupils way back in the day at Cults Academy. I am currently in Hiroshima Japan working for a couple of weeks and hopelessly jet-lagged – but ever so happy that my middle of the night internet searching found its way here. (I was listening to the broadcast of Aberdeen vs Celtic in the Scottish Cup and reminding myself of my younger days when the Dons were not quite so bad as they are now,)
Anyways – Congratulations on your publications! I always did enjoy your sense of humour enormously and am very much looking forward to reading them – especially when I see that I can pick up a copy slightly used for 1p at amazon.co.uk. Ye can tak the quine oot o aiberdeen but ye canna tak the aiberdeen oot o the quine!
March 10, 2008 at 10:11 am
Hey Debbie – what a treat!
I was trying to persuade middle son (Tom, 17) that public speaking is a good idea recently and remembered you giving a talk about additives – from the blurb on the back of a book. Alastair Laurie nearly choked himself.
Those were certainly the days. Writing is great but teaching you lot at Cults was hard to beat. Nick Westaby called in recently to see me here, out of the blue and it was sooo strange to see the boy’s face hidden in a man’s features – and on top of a man’s body.
So what is a nice girl like you doing in H?? You’ll have to get in touch again and tell me all……
Take that as homework – you have a week.
March 18, 2008 at 7:07 am
Oops – im a little late with my homework!!!
So I am getting to go home tomorrow and leave Japan far behind me until the next time…
Home now is back in Austin Texas – yee haw! where I have a lovely little house, a horse and a gun and work for a semiconductor company – helping make silicon chips a little better so that everyone can have their own website etc. We have one machine out here in Japan that we are trying to integrate into the Fab, but it is taking some time. Engineering might be a bit boring sometimes but you do seem to get to visit some interesting places.
In fact I was just thinking how strange it was that I had spent quite a bit of time in two of the most famously bombed places in the world (during WWII anyways) Hiroshima and Dresden Germany. I was in Dresden for about 3 years and my German is still crap but i did have a great vacation during the world cup in 2006! Beautiful town Dresden – but very cold in the winter.
Let Tom know (I can believe you have 3 teenagers by the way – where does the time go?) that I was mentally scarred from my public speaking debacle and now when forced to give presentations to people at work I still start off with Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls and little lambs eat ivy… Pavlovian response I think. Some things just never leave you.
So thats it – heres my real email address debsmilne@yahoo.com – give me an email sometime, so i dont have to clutter up your nice web-site with my ramblings…
later
debs
p.s. i was just kidding about the horse and the gun.