Authors Electric

I’m not a fan of spring. I find the light too clear and too cold. It picks up all the smears and smudges that should be best kept hidden and pricks the conscience into spending time with mops and dusters instead of in my office writing.  The one thing that redeems the season is, to quote Wordsworth, “ A host, of golden daffodils…Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” In the part of the country where I live, you get swathes of golden blossom planted along roadsides, or on roundabouts, which never fail to lift the spirit on a grey blustery March morning. This is the effect I wanted to reproduce in my own front garden, when I planted clusters of mini daffodil around the acer. Last autumn I snuggled the blubs around the tree secure in the knowledge that come spring I would have my own sweep of yellow to cheer me up. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Admittedly the bed in which I planted them sloped towards the drive, but I certainly didn’t expect my...

Is everyone else super-person? I can only speak for myself, but I’m struggling to fit everything in. There’s stuff I have to do, like basic cooking and eating and cleaning and having a shower. I know it’s tedious but it’s necessary and takes, let’s say, an hour and a half each day. And sometimes I have to go to the market for fruit and vegetables, or nip round the corner to the supermarket for milk and bread and coffee - another half an hour. If I’m to stay healthy, I need regular exercise - my exercise of choice is walking in the open air. If the weather is kind I can stride beside the canal, breath sweet air and hear the birds sing. That’s another hour. (If the weather is rubbish, I go for a swim - by the time I’ve gone to the pool, changed, swum, showered, changed again, and walked home, there’s not much change out of an hour and a half).  Then, I’m told I need to practise mindfulness - given the sensory soup of walking, and then the bombardment of useful and usele...

When you work alone most of the time, and when you need the outside world to buy your products or bring you interesting commissions, you have to depend on some sort of communications lifeline. The question is; when does “dependency” tip into “addiction”? It used to be the post. Every day I would be waiting eagerly for a precious letter of acceptance from a publisher, or an enquiry letter or – most crucially – a cheque. Most days there was that inevitable moment of disappointment when the postman was walking away leaving nothing of interest on the doormat or, far worse, a manuscript thumped in with a rejection letter. Then I got a telephone line of my own and that became my lifeline. I hardly dared move out of earshot of its ring, (phones were still tethered to the wall). I dreamed of the day when someone would invent a cordless phone so I could at least go out into the garden while waiting for the wonderful calls that came so sporadically. Before someone got round to ...

Stock images are something we are used to. Images from magazines and advertising hoardings have been presenting us with images of this and that for centuries. The representations in art are a subject all of their own and their roots stretch back as far as the first paintings etched into a cave wall. Yet the word ‘Symbolism’ was first coined in 1886 by the writers Gustave Kahn and Jean Moréas, and is something much discussed in the arts. In recent times, however, symbolism is often misused where ‘ Stereotype’-   a word first adopted in the  printing trade in around 1798 by Firmin Didot   to describe a printing plate that duplicated any image - would be more accurate.  Symbolism and stereotypes often appear to be interchangeable in advertising and have taken on a whole new level in the printed word. Something we need to be aware of as writers. In simple terms, take cats for example. Even before the internet full of clips showing feline antics with boxes,...

House moving looms and we find that BT are unable to supply a telephone line until 14 days after the current house owner has moved out, and can't supply us with a telephone number until then. Our internet provider cannot supply us with a connection until we have our new number - and there is a ten day wait. Well that was the first rendering. My other half spending half a day on the phone has resulted in shortening those time scales a little, with luck, but only time will tell by how much. Yes, I know most people will use their tablet or smart phone instead but I am one of those people who kill things electronic, meaning I don't have a phone capable of email. The long and short of it is that, as you read this, I shall be languishing in the new house, surrounded by cardboard boxes and unable to get online. My first reaction was eeek! But given time to think about it this may be a blessing in disguise. I suspect many of us have come to rely on social media far too much. Ma...