exposed to weather

We woke up to sunshine this morning so, after boiled eggs, headed to the coast. Worth Matravers is one of the most ridiculously picturesque villages in Dorset, a series of higgledy-piggedly stone cottages with limestone roofs. The cottages huddle around a duckpond, like so many gossips. Three ducks decided to waddle across the road, in no particular hurry, all quite content to make the traffic wait while they quacked – doubtless debating whether to go for an afternoon swim. I felt I had taken a left turn into a Beatrix Potter.

duck at worth matravers

Writing Fred, I’ve been yearning for the sea. I need to fill my lungs and mind with salt-air, and then, imagination brimming with the rush and roar, I’m ready to return home and write again. Today, it was wild up on the cliffs, the wind and sea battling against one another. I found myself staring at the water, trying to preserve the image in words for later, while the wind crashed into me and I lurched along the path like a drunkard.

And yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, when I returned home, I craved both a cup of tea and a dash of Seamus Heaney. Like Thomas Hardy, Wordsworth and the other great poets, he often writes about the impossibility of preserving nature in words. We writers are jam makers and picklers at heart; we want to find the perfect word to hold the scent of a freshly picked strawberry, that cry of the wild duck, or the way the light looks as it fall upon the cliff. But, we never can. It is merely a question of how beautifully we fail.

looking down at Chapman's Pool

Worth is an ancient village and quarrying and its sister skill, stone carving, is part of the village’s history. This sign was certainly true today…

A dash of autumn

Quick post today. Went to see UP with my mum and dad. They absolutely loved it, and I’m glad that stories about old men with impossible dreams can find an audience…

Here are a couple of pictures courtesy of Mr S.

Me inside a tree

And here is one more for luck of the path through the fields at dusk:

Dorset at dusk

 

Jack’s foreign friends

I’ve been so lucky with Mr R – Jack has found so many friends from far afield and I’d like to dedicate a series of posts to them. My last blog was about the brilliant Antipodeans, and this one is about the fabulous Germans. My German editor, Katharina, has answered all sorts of slightly unusual questions about archaic curses, old fashioned sweet nothings, as well as very politely correcting my eccentric German spelling. (When Jack gets really cross, he swears in German, and if anxious sometimes lapses into his mother tongue).

A couple of weeks ago, the book went to the German translator, Martin. He spotted a slight omission, wondering why Jack, a man from Germany, was called such an English name. I had thought about this, even writing a paragraph explaining the origin of his name early on in the novel. But, somehow, I had taken it out, worrying that it upset the rhythm of the piece. But Jocasta and I agreed that it needed to be reinserted, and I quickly made a late amendment. It was actually rather nice to drift back into playing with Mr R, while in the midst of Fred. I’ve reached a melancholy section in the narrative and find myself often feeling quite sad, so being with Mr R, felt like having a welcome cup of tea with an old friend. I’d didn’t quite confide my unhappiness to Jack, but as with all good friends, I felt much better after seeing him.

Cabbages and tea-parties

This morning Mr S brought me a bouquet of cabbages. Well it is Halloween, and cabbages are a lot more seasonal at this time of year than roses. They are actually beautiful – green and pink and white – and are sitting proudly in a vase beside the fire.

I love this time of year. Rather like at bluebell time, Mr S and I go hunting round Dorset for the best crop of colours beneath the trees. In the morning we went to Duncliff, where we found a toadstool circle in the middle of the wood – surely a portent today of all days. Then, late in the afternoon we walked from our front door across the fields to a copse of beech and sycamore trees. The last of the evening light filtered through the leaves and turned the ground beneath gold – it was as if we crunched through sunlight.

Days like today are so English: the smell of woodsmoke as we return to the cottage, short autumn days, eating russet apples from my mother’s orchard. Mr R is such an English book, a celebration of days like these and as I tramp through Delcombe, Fifehead Wood or through Stourhead, I am amazed that Jack and Sadie have found friends so far away.

Jocasta sent me a gorgeous message from a bookseller in New Zealand, where my publishers held a tea for Jack. All I can say is that Jack, Englishman that he is, would marvel at having such wonderful foreign friends.

perfect autumn day in dorset

wild mushroom chase

My mother is a keen mushroomer. From September she is out scouring the woods for chanterelle, the elusive hedgehog mushroom, or spying in the fields for bluets, puffballs (need to be lightly fried in pancake batter) or the slightly disgusting inkcaps. I’ve even eaten the controversial beefsteak tree fungus which looks and tastes disconcertingly like rare, rather high beef. Most people in M’s village share her enthusiasm and the good spots are guarded jealously. Do not even consider asking me in the comments section where to look for field mushrooms in the vale of Blackmore, for I cannot tell you. No. Really. I can’t.

This afternoon we went looking for mushrooms. There were rumours of a great hoard in meadows near the river in ***** and the entire family (Mr S, Big Mike, Mrs Mike and brood, M and Bumble the dog) all traipsed out with baskets to hunt. Nothing. Not a whiff of a mushroom to go with our wild goose.

But, it was rather magical. The small and medium sized nieces scrumped apples and blackberries instead and went back to grandma’s to bake a pie. I do feel in these autumn days that I have slipped into a nostalgic children’s book, where small people roam free across the fields and the harvest moon shines low across the golden woods.

Last week we had great fun with Jocasta (editor) and her family. As I said, I think she was slightly bemused by the somewhat literal tour of one of her writer’s imaginations. But, at this time of year, I think that all of us feel that we’re about to slip into story-book world.

Driving home tonight, the mist was thick as steam and an owl cried out in the dark. I bet it knew where the mushrooms were hidden.

 

And if you look closely, I’m sure that you can see the owl perched high in the oak tree.

the seascape of my imagination

Jocasta is here in Dorset for a week – (Jocasta editor rather than Jocasta the pheasant who is always in Dorset, residing at the bottom of the garden). I took the opportunity to take her and Mr Jocasta and the small Jocasta-lets to the seaside, and to Tyneham in particular to show them the setting for Fred. It was lovely weather, cold and crisp with the leaves turning red and gold.

It was a slightly odd sensation; I padded about the village in my wellies, pointing at the stables saying ‘that’s where Mr Bobbin the horse lives’ (J wanted to know exactly which stall), and past the ruined village stores (run by Poppy’s aunts) and realised that my imaginary ‘Tyneford’ had utterly fused with the real Tyneham, so that I’m no longer quite sure which is which. I pointed to Lovell’s tower on the horizon, and couldn’t remember what it was called in reality… and I felt so sad seeing the ruins of Burt’s cottage on the beach.

I’ve never invited someone into my imagination before in quite such a physical sense.

This is a picture Mr S took of Worbarrow/ Wobarrow Bay in Tyneham/ Tyneford…

fine china or paper plates

Mr S and I were talking yesterday to our friend, composer Jeff Rona. Jeff is a remarkable musician – he’s written music for everyone from Ridley Scott to Brian De Palma. One of our greatest nights ever was listening to Jeff conduct the Hollywood Bowl orchestra with Lisa Gerrard and ‘Dead Can Dance’.

Yesterday, Jeff recalled when he was a young flibbertigibbet of a composer, and thought about his music as ‘important’. He knew he was creating pieces of art, and this thought often made writing music difficult. Nothing was good enough – what would posterity think? Sometimes it wasn’t even fun. Then, one day he was in the studio trying some stuff out when he ran into a well known RnB artist. This guy was recording and having a great time, and he and Jeff got chatting. ‘The problem is,’ said RnB guy to Jeff, ‘You think of your music as fine china while I think of mine as paper plates.’

From that moment, Jeff resolved on only ever making paper plates. He sits in the studio and plays about, experiments, tries stuff out, has fun and doesn’t worry about the significance of his composition. And believe me, his music is amazing (it’s the staple of my playlist for Fred).

While Jeff is talking about composing music, I think the metaphor holds for writing fiction too. I write ‘literary fiction’ (didn’t know that until agent Stan told me…) but I don’t think of my writing as either important or significant. I like to have fun when I write. It’s not always enjoyable – some days it’s just hard and I feel that everything I do is nonsense. But, when I don’t worry and try stuff out, play with words and see what works and what doesn’t, good things happen. I can always cut the mistakes. Throw stuff away. After all, I only write on paper plates.

You can listen to Jeff Rona on itunes or here: http://www.jeffrona.com/index.php

pay the piper

Mr S and I are now back from Scotland. We were there for the wedding of good friends. It was all rather lovely – Scottish mansion, log fires, fir trees and stag heads outside the ladies loo. The most magical thing happened shortly before midnight. We were called outside onto the Italian loggia (Italian not Italianate – it had been shipped stone by stone from Italy in the 19th century) where orange scented candles had been lit. The lawn was dark, then out of the gloom appeared a piper in full highland regalia. We listened for a few minutes, until there was an echo, another piper in the distance. The second piper was joined by a third, then drums and marching feet. A highland band marched across the lawn, and played a series of melancholy songs.

There is a note of sadness in the bagpipes; they play the music of the battlefield with the knock of drums, and the stamp of young men’s feet. We listened in the night and heard the echo not only of these pipes, but those of the battlefields of Scotland from long ago. We heard Robbie Burn’s lament and the cries of Culloden and Bannock Burn. Then, before the clock struck, they turned and marched away into the darkness, the song fading into the gloom, and then they were gone.

The bride paid the piper with a wee dram… but I think that really I ought to have paid as the music and the melancholy has given me an idea for Fred…

chicken soup and chopped fried fish

I’m in Scotland for a few days seeing Mr S’s parents and all the other S’s. Mrs S senior is a splendid cook. I’ve done nothing but eat since we arrived, and all good Yiddishy cooking. Lunch was chopped fried fish and chopped liver and challah and I can already smell tonight’s chicken soup brewing. Mrs S’s chicken soup is a magical thing. It simmers for 7 hours or so, and is sieved, murmured over, cajoled, sieved again as the incantation is whispered. I’m really looking forward to a proper Friday night dinner with Shabbas candles and good, traditional Jewish shouting across the table.

Mrs S’s parents were called Jack and Sadie – and I’ve used their names for the main characters in ‘Mr R’. I tend to use family names in my writing. My sister-in-law, the dark and twisty J, often uses old family photos in her paintings, and I think my use of names comes from the same place. When I mention jewelery it’s often my grandmother’s, and the paintings are the ones by great-great-uncle Emile. Writer’s tend to start with a snippet of something true and then use this as a starting point to spin our tales; we’re like magpies that way, drawn to anything shiny that reeks of a story. In mine, I use lots of family things: names, paintings, bracelets and legends of great-uncle Otto, weave their way into my writing.

I think that’s why I like Friday nights so much. It’s not simply chicken soup, it’s chicken soup on a thousand dinner tables, stretching back and back from Glasgow to Frankfurt and Vienna and Moscow. There’s a rhythm to the cooking – we make soup like our mothers and grandmothers. There might be crises in the wider world, but tonight we shall sit around the supper table, light candles, spoon soup and bicker. I can’t wait.

Update: Mrs S senior, with the Pudding.

The postman waves at us

I’ve been busy with research the last few days, trawling through old newspaper archives from 1940. The Times always amazes me with its old fashioned layout. Births, death and classifieds appear on the front page, local news on the following two pages, so that anything to do with the war only appears on page 4 or 5. So, one comes across the scintillating fact on p1 that ‘Mr Cuthbert’s Weekly Gardening Talk (Carnations and Chrysanthemums)’ is being held today, as is a Stamp Collection sale (all items in excellent condition), while news of BEF finally fighting the German army only appears half way through the paper. There is something terribly British about all that – we may be at war, but no blighter is going to knock carnations and stamp collecting off the front page.

Also very British – Mr S and I took our afternoon ramble round the village, and on seeing us the postman waved. He didn’t speed up and try to mow us down on the zebra crossing ala London postie-fun, but waved. I like village life.

In other news: I signed my first proof this week. Mr S and I went to Sherborne Book Shop (to collect The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – so far so awesome) and we got chatting, and then the lovely owner of the book shop produced a proof of Mr R from the back and insisted that I sign it. It was quite a moment. Though Mr S did point out that I need to change my signature. Currently, I sign books like I do credit card slips – with a rabid scrawl. I love the Sherborne book shop – I’ve been spending my Christmas money there since I was 5 and I still can’t quite believe I’m going to have a book in the store.

Here is a bonus picture of Mr S’s favourite cow jug, filled with flowers from a garden. Not my garden. My garden isn’t full of blooms,  only bloomin’ squirrels.

Also note the jam with a hat on

My squirrel nemesis

I am being tormented by a small, furry  squirrel. No, he’s not cute. He’s evil. He’s been burying cob nuts all over my lawn. He has the whole of Dorset to bury nuts but no, only my lawn will do. There are great holes where the grass has been dug up and torn out. Cursing his squirrelly fur, I stomp the wounded grass back into place, while he sits on a fence post, rubbing his little paws, grateful that I’m helping him hide his blasted nuts so beautifully from the other squirrels. I am part of his evil masterplan.

We’ve developed a kind of battlefield ritual. I cross the lawn to the summerhouse, armed with a cup of earl grey tea, my laptop and a hard stare. Evil Squirrel sits on the fence, watching. I hiss at him. He blinks. I sip tea.

I listen to my iplayer. There is no internet so, having run out of work avoidance, I start to type. I see a grey flash streak across the fence. The lawn is quiet. But, I’m good at this, I’ve learnt to be suspicious. Putting down the laptop, (nearly strangling myself with the headphones I’ve forgotten I’m wearing), I sneak out. I spy the little monster, he’s digging a frigging hole behind the tree, out of sight from the summerhouse. He freezes, sensing his nemesis is nigh, and I leap out and run across the grass screeching like a banshee. He runs away.

I sit in the summerhouse, working away. Every time he sneaks onto the fence, I fix him with a glare and he scarpers. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’ I sing happily to myself.

Then it starts.

Tap.

Tap. Tapity.

Tap. Tap.

Yup. He’s tap dancing on the roof to torture me. If he’s not allowed to bury nuts in the lawn, then I’m not allowed to work in the summerhouse.

So, Jocasta, if you’re reading this. It’s not my fault that I didn’t get enough words done today. It was the squirrel.

with a little help from my friends

I’ve been really lucky with people offering advice and help with both Mr R and Fred. Local people told me their memories of the 50s, I listened to my grandpa’s tapes where he recollected London in the 30s. Sceptre printed lots of proofs (early reading copies) of Mr R, and several were given to Dorset folk who offered great suggestions/ corrected minor errors: I had common orchids flowering in August when anyone (other than me) knows only the frog orchid blooms, I had porters in the wrong coloured hats, the lilac was out too soon…

Fred is a musical novel. She has a soundtrack, literally – I listen to music constantly as I write – and also in the novel itself. It’s Vienna, 1938 and my heroine and narrator, Elise, comes from a musical family. Her mother, Anna, is an opera singer and sister, Margot, a virtuoso viola player. I can play the flute very badly and despite years of music lessons remain a rather poor musician. So, I’ve been advised by my friend Katie who plays the violin with the spectacular Sonus Quartet: http://www.sonusquartet.com/

She’s suggested the viola pieces that Margot plays when Robert falls in love with her, and also offered more unusual advice. When Elise leaves for England, her father asks her to take with her an old viola. Hidden within the belly is his latest novel. His works are banned in Austria, so he stashes a carbon copy on yellow tissue paper within the viola, so that it can be smuggled into England for safekeeping.

Katie has explained how this would work, (don’t ask, it involves the f-holes) and even what the viola would sound like, if played with the pages still inside. All I need now, is for her to write me a symphony…

wavy navy and other novel research

Thanks to all of you who popped by from Nicola’s coffee morning over at: http://www.helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/

I hope you come back often!

As some of you know I’m busy writing novel 2 (aka Fred – doesn’t have a title yet so I’m calling her Fred). Like Mr R, Fred is a historical novel, as in she’s set in the late 1930s/ early 1940s. This of course involves a fair bit of research. The odd thing is that my background is as an academic  – I’m trying to finish a PhD in eighteenth-century poetry – but I research my novels very differently. I confess that it’s a bit more haphazard. I start by reading books, first person accounts of the time, but once I’ve caught my scent of a story, I’m off writing like basset hound after the whiff of fox.

I keep reading constantly as I write – at the moment every 30s novel from Persephone books that I can lay my hands on. And, I’m careful to avoid anachronisms (some will creep in and then have to be fiercely edited out) and when I come to parts in the story which needs meticulous research, I force myself to stop, and spend a week or so reading. I’m doing this at the moment – reading everything I can find about the temporary naval officers in the R.N.V.R. during WW2 (aka the wavy navy – so named because of the wavy stripes on their sleeves). And I’ve some tasty recollections of farming in the 30s that I’m itching to start…and the accounts of the country house at war and those 30s poetry collections…

I’m aware that other writers spend months or even years researching before the even consider writing, while I do everything all at once, in a spinning whirl of chaos and excitement that leads to mild madness and insomnia. But, I do think that it’s a case of whatever works for you. As long as you remember that during the 1940s all ladies stockings slipped down, as the elastic had gone orf to war.

But how do you research your writing?

The cover for ‘Mr Rosenblum’s List’!

I’m so excited – here is the hardback cover for the UK edition of Mr Rosenblum’s List. The process of the cover was really fun and I have to say that my gorgeous editor Jocasta made me feel very included. She started off by sending agent Stan and I some vintage tube posters – ones for Kew Gardens and Richmond and so on, as well as some other late 40s and early 50s prints.

The first couple of sketches had flowers and the hill, even a golf flag, but we decided that it needed to feel peopled. The book is about Jack and Sadie in the landscape and so the illustrator drew them into the scene. The golf flag disappeared – the story is not really about golf, and was perhaps a bit off putting. The flowers gradually became wilder (I love the bluebells and wild clematis and the herb robert) and a flock of swallows appeared.

I love it and can’t quite believe that I’m going to have an actual, real-life book published. Yes. When I first saw a print out of the cover, I did cry. I’m a girl. It’s allowed.

The illustrator is Nathan Burton and the book designer is Sarah Christie.

I am a story monster

There is a fabulous post over at the rejectionist on novels without strong plots:

http://www.therejectionist.com/2009/09/little-kids-can-write-books-better-than.html

It made me think of my first public piece of work: a play written for the school drama festival, when I was 11. Most of the other classes devised comedies, the main characters being erm, 11 year old girls. Oh no, not for me. I wrote a play about two middle aged couples whose marriages descend into crisis while they are  aboard a cruise ship. I was excited. I paced. I drank ribena (it was in the days before my gin habit) and when the muse struck, I disappeared into my bedroom and scribbled. Then I came downstairs and performed the entire thing to Big Mike (my brother), playing all four parts. (I thought the simmering bitterness between Arnold and Vera particularly affecting).

Next day, I showed the script to my classmates. They were less than impressed. ‘Nothing happens! They just talk at each other.’ I was furious. ‘Of course there’s no plot! You never asked for a plot!’

Though, I have to say, since then no one who’s hired me to write stuff has ever asked me for a plot either, but I’ve always kind of assumed that they wanted one. We construct our lives through stories. It’s how we make sense of the world. Good conversation, a great anecdote – they’re all stories with those rhythms that go back to the Beowulf poet telling his story in the mead hall. I love stories. I hunt them down, can’t get enough of them. Like a chef who gets a tingle when he finds a perfect chanterelle in the market, I get a whiff of a story and my fingers start twitching.

So, I don’t really know what I was thinking about when I wrote the talking-head cruise ship play. My classmates got their revenge though. The next year I was made to wear bright yellow stockings, yellow pantaloons and recite Shakespeare. Now, that man understood stories.

A smattering of chaos and Gravity’s Rainbow

I do live on the edge of chaos. Even the desktop on my mac is cluttered with stuff. Whenever Mr S borrows it, he returns it with the random files tidied away into neat little blue folders. Things have been lost on my actual desk for months… phone numbers, fountain pens, knitted finger puppets, socks, while biscuits always vanish instantly, leaving behind only a mysterious trail of crumbs.

So, this is a convoluted, marginally chaotic way of justifying why I’ve not made this post before. I’m joining in the fun over at Editorial Ass and hosting the London meet up to discuss Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/09/gravitys-rainbow-read-along-week-1-p-1.html The reasoning is, if you’ve not read it yet, you probably never will unless somebody makes you and there is a support group. So, horray! This is your opportunity. And there will be cupcakes and gin and laughter! Oh, yes, and you only have to read the first 70 pages. If all goes well, we’ll discuss the other 690 at other meetings, with more gin and cupcakes – you get the idea.

The first meeting will be at 5pm on Sunday 26th September at the Yorkshire Grey Pub in Langham St, W1. I will be there. So will Mr S. And so will: http://anunopenedenvelope.blogspot.com/2009/09/book-club.html

I’m excited. All I have to do now is read it. But not now. Now it’s gin o’clock.

Autumn Bliss (and the eating of apples)

Isn’t this weather amazing? I’m not sure about an ‘Indian Summer’ – it seems peculiarly English to me: the best apple crop for years, trees drooping under red and green baubles, leaves turning scarlet and gold, and, in the evenings, the scent of wood-smoke.

Mr S and I have been out walking in the sunshine. He even has little bit of a tan, while I am, of course, pasty as ever (though rosy-apple cheeked, as is fitting for the season). After some delay, here are Mr S’s photos of Golden Cap.

looking toward Lyme Bay, this beach is Gabrielle's Mouth

And below is a witch stone. Fishermen believed that by looping one of these stones on the lines around their boats, that witches wouldn’t be able to leap aboard. Unfortunately, they often didn’t learn to swim. I would have thought that drowning was a greater danger than witches, but hey ho.

witch stone

This is the Golden Cap itself – see the sandstone in the sunshine. It’s quite a hike to the pinnacle, but the National Trust has kindly put lots of benches at points along the way. It’s so beautiful at the top – you can see all the way to Lyme Bay in one direction and across Burton Bradstock and West Bay to Portland in the other. There were lots of people picnicking at the top. A uniquely British habit: climb to the top of big hill and then sit down and eat an apple. More walkers arrived and a minute later out would come the apples. The sound of the sea and the munching of apples…

Trust me. It's a big hill.

This is a good place to lie in the sunshine and think about Fred.

off to the seaside

It’s so sunny and luv-erly that Mr S and I have decided to skip off to the sea-side. We’re going to walk at Golden Cap and try to make it to the cafe on the beach at Burton Bradstock before it closes. We anticipate at least 1 good row when we get lost. We always get lost.

Also, a mouse has eaten a hole in the rucksack…

Sloe gin and slow cooking

I’m trying to be domesticated. It’s all rather haphazard as nearly all my brain is occupied by Fred. I have large purple shadows beneath my eyes as Elise and Kit keep talking in my head at bed time. It’s like having rather noisy room mates living in your brain. When I’m not busy with Fred, I’m trying to be a good and useful little woman about the house (that’s what happens when you read too much Monica Dickens).

I made an apple pie for my Canadian friends and for the lovely Laura and Mr Miles (who sent me to Persephone books). Gillian (Canadian pal no 1) was slightly anxious: ‘why don’t we just buy one?’ she quoth-ed. ‘Suppose no one knows that you’ve gone to all that trouble and they don’t realise it’s home made?’ I reassured her that everyone would know my pie was home made. See insert. And yes, I like to label my food, just in case no one can tell what it’s supposed to be…

Then, this morning, Mr S and I went picking sloes to make sloe gin. Yum. We picked on a well-walked path in the village and several neighbours passed, commenting ‘Gin,’ as they went. I think ‘Gin’ is the new ‘hello’ for this Autumn season. Then, in the local hardware store, we bumped into another neighbour trying to buy a jar big enough to hold 3 pints of the stuff. It really is the season.

aren't they shiny?

And finally, a picture of me not working, but happy all the same. Ah. I have to go. My mother’s coming round for supper and I’ve not put the slow roast pie in the oven.

A shard of Lewis Carroll’s Looking Glass

On one of our morning walks, Mr S and I were chatting about what makes a writer. Obviously, we’re much like regular folk except for the snark and preoccupation with gin and cupcakes, – but, I think writers, like other artists, see the world slightly differently from other people. It’s like we have a sliver of Lewis Carroll’s Looking Glass inside us, perhaps concealed in our imaginations and when we write, we see the Looking Glass world reflected back. We describe what we see in our novels and stories and poems.

Lest this sounds too esoteric, let me try to be more specific and explain what I mean in the context of my own work. Both Mr Rosenblum’s List and Fred are set in Dorset: Mr R in the Blackmore Vale and Fred by the sea. Each book takes place in a village that is both real and imagined: a Dorset through the Looking Glass. Rivers are diverted with a few words, hills grow and shrink and in Fred the coastline ripples and shifts. The Dorset in each novel is utterly real to me, – it’s grown out of folklore and countryside walks and talks with a thousand local people, but it’s also a writer’s landscape rather than the physical reality. It’s a landscape of the imagination.

In Fred, the real village of Tyneham has metamorphosed into its fictional equivalent, the Looking Glass village of Tyneford. I suppose I believe that sometimes in order to really describe and see a place, from the inside out, you have to describe it how you see it in your imagination rather than in fact. For instance, I envision Venice according to Canaletto’s paintings of the city. And yet, his most famous pictures show views that do not exist.

Sometimes in order to see our world more clearly, we have to take a peek through the Looking Glass.