Tish Farrell Writer

Life Entwined at Ogunquit

Cee’s ‘Circles and Curves’ challenge is giving me the chance to show again this work by New England sculptor Antoinette Prien Schultze. ‘Life Entwined’ is circular in every way – suggesting not only the cycle of human life and love, but also the turn of the seasons, the circle of time itself.

It is made from Vermont Danby marble and weighs 4 tons. You can see it in the beautiful shore-side garden of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in southern Maine. I have written more about the Museum HERE. It is one of the most beautifully situated galleries in the world, and well worth a visit for the setting alone.

Another fine thing about Ogunquit is the Marginal Way, a cliff top path along the rugged shore. It was here I found this natural sculpture which also fits the challenge.

For more about Ogunquit Museum of American Art see my earlier post:

Only One Ogunquit: the little gallery by the sea

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A Long Time Ago in Africa

Well this is what happens when you fiddle about in Windows Live Picture Gallery. I rather like the effect – posterized for posterity, an arty rendition of UK expatriate in 1990s Kenya. The original shot is thus pretty old, just like me. I was standing in the back garden of our house in Mbabane Road, in Nairobi’s leafy Lavington district, under the loquat trees. The house is gone now, and I can see from Google Earth that Madison Insurance who owned the compound, have given it over to some development of upscale townhouses. Across the road was the run-down state primary school. I imagine it is still run down. My days back then had a daily soundtrack of children’s voices – chanting times tables mostly.

In the photo I’m wearing a self-made suit (tunic and pants) of batik cloth created at a workshop by street boys trying to get their lives together. And I’m wearing a string of Kazuri Beads, glazed ceramic beads, made by women trying build themselves and their kids a future. Kazuri means small and beautiful. The little factory in Karen, Nairobi was a joy to visit. The workshop shelves were lined with glass jars of bright beads, rather like a picture book sweet shop, while at benches in the the airy room, women created beads and threaded necklaces in colour schemes of their choosing. I’m only sorry that I seem to have no photos, but if you go to the link you can see the factory today – much expanded and employing men too.

I still have the beads and the suit, and still wear them too, although the batik cloth is a little thin, while I, sadly, am not.

And now here’s a picture of our house – home for seven years.

It came with the usual services that accompany the living quarters of TCOs (Technical Cooperation Officers) working for Her Majesty’s Department for International Development. These included a well secured compound perimeter with lights, a 24/7 security guard, house alarms (checked monthly), internal security gate, barred windows, guard dog, and regular applications of pesticide by Rentokil. Phew. We did not like any of this much, although we did like Patrick, our day guard, such a tall and gentle man. It was hard to imagine him fending off intruders. He had a farm back home in Western Kenya where his wife stayed in the good stone house he had built for her, along with their three children. He used to go home twice a year to plant or harvest his maize crop.

To make up for all the oppressive security, during the day I used to walk around the district on foot, roaming along the avenues. I wasn’t sure what it was I supposed to afraid of, although I did know that people did have their homes broken into, and that expats who insisted on driving large new Land Cruisers were often relieved of them (on their own compounds) by guys with AK47s, and strangely enough, soon after said expats (usually diplomats) had arrived in country and taken possession of the new vehicles via customs and imports at Mombasa port. The word on the street was that these robbers were highly connected. Very highly connected. This situation frequently reminded me of one of my father’s favourite sayings: the fish goes rotten from the head, although one would have been foolish to say this too loudly, or even at all back then.

Farrell Team Leader, Graham, had a works Land Rover for work, but otherwise we drove a battered Suzuki jeep. It had some interesting features. A previous owner had cut a hatch over the back seats, and made a fibre glass lid to go over the top. For game viewing you could simply unclip it. I didn’t drive it much, because that was the really scary thing – Nairobi driving. I often used to ponder if I could get to places by driving on the very wide pavements. Once when I forgot I was in Kenya and slowed at a zebra crossing on a city highway to let a pedestrian cross, the poor woman looked as if she would faint. I was lucky that the Suzuki and I didn’t get flattened by a Tusker beer truck, while I and the woman stared at one other in a state of frozen confusion, neither of us able to move.

The other thing that used to scare me about driving was that parts used to fall off the Suzuki. G’s nonchalant response to my concern was, ‘Well if you were still going, you obviously did not need it, whatever it was.’

On the whole, then, it was better walking. I could peep through the cracks in the big steel gates that protected ambassadorial and diplomatic residences, and count the excessive number of garbage bags put out for BINS, the private refuse removal company. I’d see street kids and Maasai, greet the security guards who sat out on the neatly trimmed verges and chatted house to house. I was intrigued by the barber who had turned a fallen flame tree into a salon, and I liked the smells of all the garden trees – cypress, frangipani, the warm musky smell of fever trees. When the rains came the streets would be filled with silvery clouds of termites on their nuptial flight. At dusk, the frogs in the Nairobi River way below our house would strike up frog songs that resounded across the valley. The crescent that adjoined Mbabane Road was called Applecross – a bizarrely English name that evoked pastoral perfection of the sort that had never existed outside colonial settlers’ minds.

When we took over the house from G’s predecessor we also took on the resident house steward, Sam, whose homeland was in Maragoli in Western Kenya. He had long worked for expatriates, but back home and also on the borders of Nandi he had small farms – three in all. His first wife lived on his ancestral land in what had been the Maragoli tribal reserve in colonial times. He still called it ‘the reserve’. He said he had poor relations on the other smallholdings, but they were not looking after the land properly and this caused him much concern. Apart from home leave, he stayed in Nairobi with his second wife, living in the servants’ quarters at the bottom of the garden. One reason for staying in Nairobi was so his three youngest children and a grandchild who had come to live with him could go to school across the road.

Now meet Sam, with guard dog Kim. We eventually had to hand Kim over to a vet, this after he started attacking children who came to play with Sam’s children on our compound. The vet told us that some German Shepherds were prone to this behaviour, and once begun, this was not a habit that could be broken. She told us she would try to send him to a rescue centre that kept such dogs, but otherwise he must be destroyed.

We did not ask which of these had been the outcome, but after having one sweet little girl’s face stitched up at the hospital we could not risk it happening again. Luckily the dog missed the child’s eye and the wound healed well. Here she is then, Sera, fully recovered with only a hint of a scar under the right eye.

And next comes Silas, Sam’s youngest son.

And Sam’s grand daughter, Zaina playing badminton with Silas on the back lawn.

Then Sam off-duty out on Mbabane Road. He only worked half days as we didn’t have enough house work.

And this is Francis, who stood every day on the corner of Mbabane and James Gichuru and sold us The Standard and Nation newspapers. He turned the newspaper round deliberately because it was featuring the British envoy, a man somewhat outspoken on Moi regime corruption.

And finally me again, not looking quite so postered (but oh, so much younger) with poor old Kim, and those Kazuri beads again. Interesting days.

Looking for Smut: Work on Kenya’s Highland Farms

Valentine’s Day Runaway

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Zanzibar: time’s twists and turns

…a gateway to Africa. Through its portals passed not only slaves, spices and ivory, but also missionaries, explorers and conquerors.

Abdul Sheriff, Professor of History, Dar es Salaam University

Zanzibar – it’s all in the name – the Indian Ocean shores where Arab merchants met with African farmers and created a new people: the Swahili. In the Arabic Kilwa chronicles of the Middle Ages, the word Zanj denotes non-Muslim black people, and the word bar means coast, and the term back then referred to much of the East African seaboard – to wherever the dhow traders seasonally put in to haggle with Bantu farmers for ivory, leopard skins, rhino horn, iron, ambergris and mangrove poles. These, then, are the shores of the Sindbad (Sendebada) tales, but today the term ‘coast of the blacks’ survives only in the name of the Zanzibar archipelago (Unguja and Pemba Islands), now part of Tanzania.

These days too, Zanzibar Island, more properly known as Unguja, is seen as the heartland of Swahili culture, and the place where the purest form of KiSwahili is spoken. Once, though, there were many other powerful Swahili centres – independent city states that included Manda, Lamu, Malindi and Mombasa in Kenya, and Sofala far to the south in Mozambique. Such states, with stone towns built of coral rag, began evolving from at least the early 800s CE (Manda), by which time KiSwahili was already a fully developed language, albeit with many regional forms.

In fact the trade along East Africa had been going on from well before the 9th century. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek account of Indian Ocean trade written around 60 CE, indicates that the people of the kingdoms of Yemen and Arabia already had well established trade routes as far south as Mozambique. The Romans had also been here, doubtless making use – as all the seafarers did – of monsoon winds that in season carried them south down the African coast, or east to India, and then, with the change in the wind,s northwards and homewards to the Gulf.

The earliest traces of a stone town on Unguja date from the 12th century when merchant princes from Shiraz in Persia settled on the island. Over successive centuries this settlement was destroyed twice by the Portuguese (who, after Vasco Da Gama discovered he could sail round Africa in 1498, seized control of the Indian Ocean trade) and once by the Omani Arabs whom the Swahili sultans of the Kenya coast called in on several occasions to help rid them of the European tyrants. The Portuguese were ousted from Zanzibar and the Swahili mainland at the close of the 17th century, and thereafter, until the British declared Zanzibar a protectorate in 1890, it was the Omani Arabs who controlled the surviving Swahili states.

The Stone Town we see today dates mostly from the nineteenth century when the place was at its most prosperous. Abdul Sheriff describes the scene:

“Zanzibar was then a cosmopolitan metropolis. Its harbour teemed with square-rigged ships from the West and oriental dhows with their lateen sails from many countries in the East, carrying all the colours of the rainbow. Here Yankee merchants from New England drove a hard bargain with Hindu traders in their large crimson turbans or Khojas in their long coats, exchanging ivory for American cloth; the Marseillais haggled with the Somali for hides and sesame seeds from Benadir; Hamburg entrepreneurs shipped tons of cowrie shells to West Africa, where they served as currency; and Arab caravans rubbed shoulders with their African counterparts from the Mountains of the Moon.” (The History and Conservation of Zanzibar Stone Town 1995).

Beit al-Ajaib, The House of Wonders, was built by Sultan Barghash in 1883 to host ceremonial events. He was an extravagant man and, before his death in 1888, built 6 palaces across the island of Unguja. After the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution when the Omanis, along with many Indian residents, were killed or expelled, the building was used as government offices. When we visited in 1999 it was abandoned, but for one of the last sultan’s cars (candy pink in colour) parked inside the atrium near the front door. A good friend who visited the House of Wonders recently tells me it is still there.

Trade was given much impetus in 1830 when the Sultans of Oman moved their capital to Zanzibar to oversee what turned out to the short-lived boom in clove production. They and other Indian and Arab landowners owned many clove and coconut plantations on the archipelago, and these were worked by African slaves.

The slave trade, then, was another source of the island’s prosperity. By 1860 the archipelago had some 60,000 slaves, not only working the plantations, but also fulfilling domestic and labouring tasks, and providing new wives for the sultan’s harem. And it is worth noting here that the slaves in Zanzibar were not generally ill treated in the way they were in the Americas; it was not unknown, after long service, for them to inherit their master’s land and property. The children of the harem slaves were also acknowledged by the sultans who fathered them, and treated as royal children with appropriate titles.

During the 19th century it is reckoned that some 50,000 slaves a year were being sold in the Zanzibar slave market. It was only in 1873 that the slaving was abolished, this after much pressure from the British who had first made a treaty with the Sultan Said in 1822 in an attempt to kerb the trade. That treaty had produced little effect. There was too much demand. The French, in particular, needed slaves for their tropic island plantations.

And to meet the demand the Swahili and Arab slaving expeditions would set off from Zanzibar for the African mainland, taking their caravans of porters along well-walked slave paths through Tabora in Tanzania, and down into Zambia, or travelling up present day Kenya to the Great Lakes regions. The notorious Swahili slaver, and plantation owner, Tipu Tip, roved as far as the Congo , terrorizing villages across the territory.

Finding some way to end the trade was one of the motivations that drove the missionary-explorer David Livingstone ever onwards on his gruelling explorations across Africa. It was thought that if the continent was opened up to civilizing Europeans, then the ‘filthy trade’ could be stopped. But then like the slavers, he and other European explorers (Burton, Speke, Stanley, Cameron, Thomson) started their journeys from Zanzibar. All such travellers, including missionaries, relied on the expertise of porters and seasoned safari guides who otherwise worked on the slave caravans. In 1866, before his last expedition, Livingstone stayed at the house above. It had not long been built by Sultan Majid. Now it is the office of the Zanzibar Tourist Corporation.

From John Hanning Speke’s Journal of the Discovery of the Nile 1863

The slaving and ivory trades worked in tandem. Newly captured slaves were not only driven on forced marches across the continent to the coast, but they were also made to carry supplies, and these included any elephant tusks that the slavers had procured – ivory destined for the production of piano keys and billiard balls for the European market. It was only in 1897 that all slaves on Zanzibar were given their freedom. The Anglican church stands on the site of the slave market, beside the now famous sculptures commemorating the years of abuse. It is horrifying to consider what the cost of this trade has been for Africa: generation upon generation of the strongest, brightest and most beautiful young people robbed from their communities.

Naturally the British could congratulate themselves on finally stopping the trade on Zanzibar, although I believe it continued well into the 2oth century at Lamu. Today, too, slave mongering thrives, and under our very noses in Europe, only now the abused are not necessarily black, so perhaps we don’t think it’s the same thing – the brutal deprivation of liberty and dignity, along with forced labour?

But back to 1890, the end of the Sultans’ control and Britain’s laying claim to Zanzibar. Because now we come to a whole new angle. For this was also the year of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, an agreement between the Germans and the British, whereby (in return for Heligoland, the strategic North Sea island), the Germans waived rights to Zanzibar, Witu on the mainland coast, and to the territory now known as Kenya across which the British were planning to build the Uganda Railway. (Bismarck apparently called this deal swapping the trousers for a button).

Suddenly, then, Zanzibar has a very particular purpose for the British Empire. It will become the spring board for the claiming of extensive East African territory, and it will start with that mad, mad railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. Of course, with slavery being outlawed, some new mechanism of harnessing native power will need to be thought up. Something civilized and civilizing. I know – we’ll call it colonialism, and enclose indigenous people in their own territory, make reserves of their own homes, which they can’t leave unless they have a pass. Then we’ll introduce hut and poll taxes so forcing them to work for Europeans…

For more of the colonial story go to an earlier post Vulcanicity HERE. In the meantime below are some more soothing views in and around Stone Town, now a World Heritage site. Life is not so grand as it was in the days of the finely robed Omanis. Fishing, ferrying, farming (growing spices, coconuts and vegetables), curio trading, boat building, mangrove pole harvesting and tourism are the main sources of income. As in all African countries, people work hard to educate their children, and this is their number one priority.

Stone Town is also a devoutly Muslim community, and sometimes this does not sit well with tourist inclinations to behave in ways not considered either respectful or respectable by Zanzibaris. There are over 50 mosques of several different Muslim persuasions, but most are unobtrusive buildings without minarets, and are scarcely noticeable among the domestic dwellings. There is also a Catholic cathedral as well as the Anglican church. The streets are maze-like and shadowy, but we met with nothing but gracious hospitality when we wandered along them. The place may seem run down (although here and there restoration is in progress), but in the sudden whiffs of jasmine the Sinbad romance lingers on…

(For more about the Swahili see an earlier post HERE.)

AILSA’S TRAVEL CHALLENGE: TWIST

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Yesterday’s Shining Star? The Restoring of Artist Mildred Elsi Eldridge (1909-1991)

Self Portrait Mildred Elsi Eldridge. Photo: Glyndwr University www.glyndwr.ac.uk

It has to be asked, this burning, niggling question, but why on earth do we forget women artists so readily? Why is it that their work is less exhibited, less revered or, if noticed at all, only grudgingly accorded a modicum of the status enjoyed by male artists?

I leave it to you to supply the answers to these questions. I only note that this same enquiry was the driving force behind Professor Amanda Vickery’s recent BBC2 series The Story of Women and Art. In this too brief historical exploration of forgotten/hidden/suppressed and otherwise invisible women artists, Professor Vickery introduced us to the breath-taking creativity of (among others) Sofonisba Anguissola, Berthe Morisot, Johanna Koerten, Properzia de Rossi and Artemisia Gentileschi. I will be forever grateful for the introduction.

Now, though, I have a very particular question. It relates to the work you are about to see – details from a great mural that, until fairly recently, was hidden from view.

All photos: Glyndwr University www.glyndwr.ac.uk

So my question is this. What was in the minds of the people when they took down and concealed from sight this work of lucent genius by Mildred Elsi Eldridge; how did they feel when they stowed away the Dance of Life?

Sorely deflated? Bereft? As if the light had gone out?

The work was originally commissioned in the early 1950s by the Hospital Management Committee of the Robert Jones Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Gobowen near Oswestry in Shropshire. A new nurse’s home had been built and the mural was to hang in the dining hall. The hospital’s Doctors Menzies and Salt had recently been to Sweden and seen how art was being introduced to hospitals to enhance the healing process.

The fee for the commission was £500 and the work took M E Eldridge around five years to complete (Gwydion Thomas in Life and Times of M E Eldridge). In 1999, after being on display for forty years, the mural was put into storage. The hospital was undergoing development. But once consigned to custodial care, it was over a decade before moves were made to restore the panels and find them a new home.

Elsi’s son, Gwydion Thomas, was a child when the panels were being painted (see the boy with the monkey above). He says the work was created in their home, in the drawing room of Manafon Rectory, Montgomery. He says that, as there was not enough wall space to hang the work in progress, Elsi rolled up completed portions as she went along, hanging others over doors as she was painting. He says the work wound many times around the room. It is a sharp glimpse into this woman’s focus, vision and determination.

The mural’s overarching theme explores how we industrialized human beings have become detached from the natural cycles of life and death. There are depictions of alienation and loss. Yet the work inspires hope, too, through the reclaiming of forgotten wisdom and traditional ways of living and healing. And so, despite the dark undercurrents, the work is hugely elevating. Joyous. Transcendent. Full of verve. When fellow artist, Stanley Spencer, saw it in 1958 he wrote to Elsi: “Just one look at the heavenly sheep panel would remove all fear and gloom.”

Art Historian, Peter Lord, has described the work as “a masterpiece on so many levels”, while pointing out not only the technical ambitiousness of so large a project, but also the fact that Elsi completed the work without a suitable studio.

It is good news, then, that Dance of Life has now been released from custody, restored and put on permanent view at Glyndŵr University’s Centre for the Creative Industries in Wrexham. It can be viewed by visiting the main University Reception (tel: 01978 293950).

Restoration by Vanessa Andrew in progress at Glyndwr University www.glyndwr.ac.uk

Gwydion Thomas speaking at a private view of the restored panels

Photos: Glyndwr University www.glyndwr.ac.uk

So: you have seen some of her work, including that self-assured self-portrait at the start of this post, but what of the artist M E Eldridge? Why isn’t she better known?

She was born in Wimbledon in 1909, the daughter of a pawn- broker turned jeweller. She studied at Wimbledon College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art, where her teachers included Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and William Rothenstein. She was one of the RCA’s star pupils. In her autobiography she says of this time:

A free studentship in 1931 took me to the RCA which in those days was attached to the Victoria and Albert Museum. There were huge doors from the V&A into the College which were kept securely locked but as there was always one of the museum keepers on duty on the other side of the doors, special signs and knocks could be made so that after signing on at the RCA entrance desk it was possible to escape into the V&A and make drawings of the splendid treasures in the museum, or experimental drawings of one’s own which would probably have received severe criticism from the RCA staff. From there, sallies could be made to the Science Museum across Exhibition Road or to the Natural History Museum to make studies of animals, plants and fungus.

In 1934 The Rome Scholarship competition was held – the subject Music. I submitted the 5′ x 5′ Telling the Bees which later became the central part of the first panel in the mural in the Dining Hall of theNurses’ Home at the Gobowen Orthopaedic Hospital.

M. E. Eldridge Autobiography

This was the piece that won her the prestigious Travelling Scholarship to Italy and opened the doors to the art world. When she returned to London she soon established herself, being the only artist to sell all her work at 1936 Royal Academy exhibition. The next year she had a one-woman show at the Beaux Arts Gallery, and with the proceeds of the sales, including several to major collectors and large metropolitan art galleries, she bought herself a Bentley car. And then –

She turned her back on the glitter, and headed off in her Bentley for the Shropshire-Wales borderlands to teach at Oswestry High School and Moreton Hall School for Girls in Shropshire. She lodged just over the border in Wales, in Chirk near Wrexham, and it was in the house where she was staying that she met the fellow lodger, a young curate, who was to become known to the world as poet, R.S. Thomas. She made this portrait of him in 1940, the year of their marriage.

It would be easy to say that the growing fame of RS eclipsed or stunted Elsi’s talent. He apparently took no interest in her work or did anything to encourage her. There is a revealing interview in the New Welsh Review issue 64 in which Gwydion Thomas says that after Elsi’s death in 1991, his father wondered if Elsi would have “gone on painting properly” if, as they moved from rectory to rectory across Wales, he had ever bothered to arrange for a house with suitable work space for her. RS admitted, too, that he should never have expected her to live at Sarn y Plas in Rhiw (see the previous post) after he retired from the priesthood, and the church authorities would not allow them to buy the Aberdaron rectory with its pleasant rooms and fine views.

Gwydion describes her room at the house in Rhiw: so dark with two tiny windows, and damp too. She had to keep her paintings in black plastic refuse bags to protect them from the water that dripped through the walls. It was so cold, that as she painted, she kept her feet inside a cardboard box, along with a two-bar electric heater, and so was frequently burned. The room also had a low loft which she reached by means of a ladder. Here, with the company of mice, she both slept and worked. Tellingly, the new room that the Thomases built at Sarn y Plas served RS as bed-sitting room.

Elsewhere, Gwydion describes Elsi as

a remarkable and talented woman. She painted, and sold, some 2,000 finished pictures and produced innumerable studies…She was a weaver, a sculptor, a clothes maker – she made me clothes out of rabbit and mole skins – and a knitter, a teacher, a writer and illustrator of children’s books…She designed altar cloths, stained glass windows and wrought-iron chandeliers. She designed and planted four gardens, raised a child, cooked for my father: four meals a day, every day, for 50 years.

He did not know why she stopped painting landscapes, and took to churning out what he calls ‘pretty’ paintings and illustrations. But he does say something that is perhaps illuminating. He says that when his parents first met, RS was writing “dreadful imitations of soppy Georgian poetry”, and full of dreams of Celtic romance. Then along comes this vibrant, shining, well read, well travelled and sophisticated young woman who can introduce him to other kinds of literature, and to the wider world besides.

When it comes to Elsi’s influence on the poet, R S Thomas scholar, Jason Walford Davies, calls her a catalyst, a promoter, the one who made things possible, and helped RS realize a career as poet. She certainly inspired him to write some of his most humane and moving poems.

Marriage

We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love’s moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
‘Come,’ said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance, And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird’s grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.

R S Thomas

And so perhaps, in a sense, R S Thomas was also one of Elsi’s creations, a co-creation certainly. She gave him the gift of possibility, and that is a great gift indeed. Her artist self may indeed have been diminished by the marriage, although she strikes me as a woman who knew her own mind and made her choices accordingly. Perhaps she had painted out all her best thoughts, and felt she had nothing more to add in terms of ‘great works’. She anyway never stopped creating, making paintings for Medici greetings cards for instance, and she was working still when she could barely see.

There seems to be no single explanation, then, as to why M E Eldridge, after such a glittering start, is not better known today. Clearly she had some hand in this when she decided to drive away from her London career, and head for the Welsh Marches. But then to leave in a Bentley, that most self-aggrandizing of vehicles? It is all so playfully enigmatic.

And so instead of answers, I leave you, in like vein, with this alluring abstract study called ‘Gwydion’s treasures 1952’. I love the shining light in the marbles: what a heart-felt evocation of childhood freedom, and not a shred of sentiment. Only wonder at the cycle of life and death to be observed upon the sea shore, and seen through the endlessly enquiring eyes of a child. Her child.

For further discussion of overlooked women artists:

Jeanne de Montbaston Women, Art and Authority: The Language of Exclusion

#artbywomen

Losing Kui ~ an extract

First published as El Nino and the Bomb, Cicada Magazine 2008, now a Kindle e-book

artwork: Kathleen Collins Howell

MONDAY

First light, Kimiti Farm, Ingigi

Kui wakes – a golden starburst in her head. When she opens her eyes the idea is there. She does not know where it comes from, but it seems to have something to do with Baba, her Daddy Julius, whom she rarely sees because he works in the city, far away from their village.

Thinking of Baba gives her a sickly, sinking feeling. Yesterday he came when she and Mummy were on their way to church. Kui spotted him first. There he was, so smart in his dark city suit, picking his way up the muddy lane. She wondered why he did not have on rubber boots as she and Mummy did, or carry a brolly since it had started to rain again. She wanted to run and hug him, but Mummy gripped her hand more tightly saying, ‘No, Kui. Stay under the umbrella. You will spoil your best clothes.’ And then Baba was there, standing over her, but before Kui could open her mouth to greet him, he and Mummy were face to face, and it was all stabbing words and hard eyes.

‘I am taking Kui to church,’ Mummy said, speaking the words in a way that gave Kui a crushing feeling in her chest. ‘We will return at supper time.’

Baba made a cross face. ‘You know what I think about that.’

Then Mummy said, ‘Yes, Julius. Your godless views are well known to me.’

That did it. Kui tried to twist her hand free and run back to the house, but Mummy’s hand gripped like iron claws. Next Baba was shouting, ‘For God’s sake, Faith. I’ve come to see you, don’t you understand? I’ve spent good money on fares and now you say you’re taking the child to wail and pray all day. Well dammit woman, I’m going to the pub.’ And he did too, striding off in the opposite direction towards the village shops. Kui watched him go, picturing him stepping inside Jimmy Mwangi’s bar where she knew many of the village men went on Sundays.

And so that was that. Baba had gone. No hello. No bye-bye. He did not even notice her new church dress that Granny had bought for her. For the rest of the day she kept thinking she had done something very bad. Pastor Benson’s loud shouting did not help. Sins came flocking round her head like swarms of biting flies, and the priest’s cries of Repent! Repent! sounded like curses.

When she and Mummy came home from church it was nearly night-time, and the rain had turned to a misty drizzle. While Mummy made their evening meal, Kui took Mummy’s big umbrella and went back to the farm gate to wait. In the growing darkness she heard the frogs in the hedgerows pipe louder and louder, and the crickets chatter like crazy, but Baba did not come. She and Mummy ate their ugali and greens alone as they usually did, and then Kui went to bed. For ages she lay very still in her little room, listening out for him. Then the songs of bugs and frogs filled up her head and she stopped listening.

It was the slamming house door that woke her. Then the rain came beating on the roof, and then there was a bad row with Mummy’s voice rising above the rain noise:

‘Drinking away Kui’s school fees again-

‘Treating the whole bar-

‘How can you be so irresponsible, Julius?

‘My God. Kui is five. She should be in school-’

At first Baba did not say much. Then he let out a roar that sounded just like Lois, Mzee Winston’s old cow, who often stood by their fence and bellowed like that when she was unhappy.

‘I’ll kill you, slut. Insulting me…your…your husband…how dare you-

‘Peasant. Whore–

‘How’d I know that child is mine?’

Then the fight really started and Kui had to wrap her head in the blanket to shut it out. The next time she woke there was only the pounding rain and blackness and Baba snoring loudly next door.

Now, though, there is light at her window and she is wide awake, the idea shining like the Wise Men’s star. She will go and live with Granny. Then she will never again wake up to find a stranger-ugly-Mummy leaning over her bed with swollen eyes and crusty blood on her lips. Also if she stays with Granny, Baba will stop hurting Mummy, and Mummy can come on the bus and visit her at Granny’s house.

Kui’s heart flutters like a small bird against her ribs. She must hurry. Already Jo-Jo the cockerel is crowing good morning on the shed roof. Any moment Mummy might come to help her dress. But she does not need help, does she? She is a big girl now. Soon she will be going to school. Granny will take her. She slips out of bed, shivering in her vest and pants, and quickly pulls on the church frock she was wearing yesterday. She cannot reach all the buttons, but never mind. Granny will say Ah! My little princess, as soon as she sees her. The pale blue satin is soft as silky sky and the net petticoats float like clouds around her legs. As she pulls on the long white socks and fastens the straps on the patent shoes she thinks she is just like Cinderella going to the prince’s ball. Then she spots the big pink cardigan on her shelf. Granny made it for her birthday, along with the matching bonnet with its big fluffy tassel. She puts them on.

Next she wonders how to leave the house. She can tell from Baba’s snoring that he is on the sofa by the front door. If she creeps by on tiptoe he will not wake, but she doesn’t want to smell his breath. She turns to the window. One bar of the thief-grille is broken. It is wide enough to squeeze through. She climbs onto her bed and opens the window, then hitching up her skirts, wriggles through, and climbs down onto the wooden bench outside. Pleased at her escape, she waves at Jo-Jo, puts her finger to lips (Ssssh), then jumps lightly into the mud that make ugly splashes up her socks. Oh dear. She rubs the stains worse, then skates off down the rain-soaked path. She is glad she has on her best church shoes instead of the ugly rubber boots. The slippy soles are good for mud-skating, and Mummy is not there to tell her off.

Out on the lane it is foggy, but the rain has gone. She passes no one, although there are some big boys climbing the mango tree outside Mzee Winston’s gate. Then down at the corner by the tea collecting shed she sees the minibus Joybringer taking on passengers. She knows it is Joybringer because it has golden rain round the back window and Mickey Mouse is waving to her. She also knows that this is the bus that she and Mummy take when they go to see Granny. While the tout is on the roof tying down a bicycle, she slips aboard, dodging between a mama with a basket of eggs and a man waiting to load a large iron roof sheet. She worms her way through the forest of legs and bundles to a corner space on the back seat.

She has no money for the fare, but she will tell the tout that Granny will pay when she gets off. Also, she is not sure which stage to ask for except that Granny always meets them at the big shopping centre past the coffee farm. Kui looks forward to that bit of the journey. The shop by the bus stop has beautiful pictures of black and white cows painted on its walls, and Mummy tells her that the pictures are there so everyone can know it is the butcher’s shop, even people like Kui who cannot read yet. Granny will be waiting by the cows, and when she sees Kui she will cry, ‘See what joy the Joybringer brings me’ and give Kui a big hug. Then they will go hand in hand down the windy track to Granny’s little wooden house, and Granny will stir the coals on her hearth of three rocks and make the special porridge that she always makes, and give Kui a big cup of milky, sweet tea from her thermos flask.

Kui licks her lips, then hugs herself with excitement as Joybringer speeds off through the village. How glad she is to be visiting Granny. How grown up she is to be travelling on a bus all by herself.

5.30 a.m. Kiarie Farm, Ingigi

Even as daylight sifts through the bedroom curtains, Winston Kiarie knows there is something wrong. The worry that has haunted him for weeks now roots like a jigger under a toenail. All night he has lain awake, listening and wondering – on and on, as the clock ticked off the hours. All night the rain has burst like gunfire on his iron roof, boiling out his gutters, threatening to explode expensive window glass. In the black hour before dawn, with Rahab snoring beside him, he finally understood the meaning of water on the brain. He had it. Lying there in his own bed, trapped like a man inside a waterfall – the drenching, drumming deluge. Where did such rain come from? Never in his long life had he known weather like it, the short rains becoming long rains, the long rains forgetting to stop.

Then the jigger-fear started up. ‘They’re unnatural,’ it nagged, ‘these rains they call El Niño. Now is the time of soft mists to ripen winter maize, not of flood and tempest to devastate the land. Mark my words. Some great evil is abroad.’

And in the darkness Winston found himself muttering, ‘Yes. Yes. It’s what I thought. Some even say it’s the end of the world.’ This thought made him tremble, and quickly he probed the dark for more rational explanations. Fear, he knew, always loomed largest at night. The jigger was probably exaggerating. By day its pronouncements might not seem so ominous.

Yet with the dawn Winston finds that the word ‘unnatural’ still running round his head. He watches the curtains lighten by degrees. Hears the rain stop hammering, but still the fear is there. Sighing, he hauls himself from the bed where Rahab still snores, gently tucks the blanket round her. Not even the jigger fears can put off the morning routine: a trip to the latrine, milking, then a big mug of tea.

Through the crack in the curtains he can see that all is greyness out in the yard. He struggles stiffly into pants, shirt and the bright blue pullover that Rahab made for him in the days when she could still conjure knitwear from two steel pins, a fat ball of yarn and some secret inner vision that he could never fathom. At the kitchen door he pulls on the old English sports coat, up-ends and shakes his rubber boots before putting them on (so clammy on bony old feet) then, unbolting the door, steps into the yard.

Outside, his hands fly skywards. Thank Ngai. No rain. Only wet mist, and that at least is seasonal. He slip-slides through farmyard mud, heading for the path to the long-drop latrine. In the slow-going he thinks that, at their age, he and Rahab could probably do with one of those modern indoor bathrooms that may be found in smart hotels. But then it would be costly to build, and the drainage hard to manage with the farmhouse perched as it is above the Great Rift. Besides, the long-drop is conveniently downwind; it serves well enough if it is dug out regularly, although the thought of this chore makes him sigh. Like much else these days, such jobs get no easier.

Shunting across the yard, his boots are soon so caked with mud that they are hard to lift. This gives him the oddest sense of moving forwards only to slide back to where he started. For a moment he stands still to check progress and, glancing back to the kitchen door, suddenly sees the funny side.

Ha! Moving forward to slide back? Sounds like some joke government slogan. Well, isn’t that how life is now: everyone striving, but then ending up worse off than before? He must tell Rahab over their breakfast cuppa. Even she will see the humour of it. At least he thinks she might. Yes. Moving forward to slide back. What a joke.

He stops at the cattle pen to scrape the excess mud from his boots. At this rate he might never reach the privy in his lifetime. Two Ayrshire cows and three Jerseys push their faces at him over the fence. Five lots of breath make white plumes in the mist. Winston briefly pats each dewy nose in order of seniority: Lois, Lola, May, Primrose, Mumbi. All present. All correct. And yet?

He turns and looks around the farmyard, scanning the acanthus hedge where the fog hangs in shrouds. But it is not the fog that disturbs him; it is something else. It is silence. Not even a dove or starling calling. After the night’s thundering rain so much quietness is uncanny. He thinks of Rahab then, and wonders if she is awake yet. She sleeps so much these days; not even last night’s din disturbed her. Sometimes she seems to slip into another world, as if she is submerged in an old-age, silent fog all her own. He wonders if the endless rain is to blame (water on the brain?). All he can do is hope that she will come back to herself.

He presses on slowly across the yard, telling himself that he is not the only one to be worried by weather. Two days ago, during a lull in the rain, he and Rahab walked to Ingigi’s general store. They needed tea and maize meal. Along the lane the lantana bushes steamed under a misty sun, and people stopped to commiserate over the general quagmire. Not everyone was complaining though. Outside their neighbour’s Faith Muthoni’s place little Kui and another child were playing shop. They were having a fine time shaping rounds of mud and mango leaves, and setting them out on a banana leaf.

‘Mud pies,’ Kui cried when she saw them. ‘I will give you a good price.’ Then she dissolved into shy giggles when Rahab sparked into life and ordered ten. Winston at once repeated the order, trying to join in the children’s fun. The only problem was he could not be sure if Rahab was joking.

Further on at the market crossroads they found a big crowd trying to shunt Joybringer out of the mudslide that had spilled down the plum orchard above the bus stop. While the windows sparkled with old Christmas tinsel and Mickey Mouse grinned like a mad thing, tempers began to fray. City-bound travellers were suddenly sprayed in mud from a spinning back wheel, and this was the moment that Sergeant Njau turned up and tried charge the bus driver for causing a public nuisance. It was very poor timing on the sergeant’s part. Also Winston was astonished to learn there was such a crime. But Sergeant Njau had pressed his luck too far this time. The passengers, furious that any fine would be added to their fares, turned on him. The officer, faced with a mob of such unexpected ferocity, muttered something about ‘mitigating circumstances’, and quickly retreated to the Police Post.

Meanwhile Jimmy Mwangi, the local bar owner, caught Winston’s eye.

‘It’s like the Plagues of Egypt,’ he said, nodding at Sergeant Njau’s departing back. ‘If we’re not scourged by flood or drought or bugs eating our crops, it is swarms of bloodsuckers like him. Making money from other people’s misery. I ask you.’ But before Winston could think of a suitably non-committal reply, since he had learned from past experience not to voice opinions about officials in public, Samwel the butcher chipped in, ‘End of the world, that’s what this El Niño means. God is reminding us to repent, sending us these mudslides and floods. The Millennium will soon be upon us.’

By then Winston wished that he and Rahab had stayed at home, away from such alarmist forecasts. Even when they reached Quality General Store, Mrs. Kuria wailed that there had been no maize meal delivered and surely God was sending an absence of ugali to punish them for their wicked ways.

Winston could summon no suitable response to this either. Now, though, he thinks the doom-mongers may have a point, but only so far. God, he is sure, is not the culprit. Recently he has been reading the newspapers more carefully. He has learned, for instance, that the felling of the highland forests is changing the Rift Valley’s climate, lowering the water table, and loosening the light tropical soils so that they wash away with every rainstorm. On top of this, everyone knows that officials have been plundering the valuable hardwoods for years, and then clearing the rest for charcoal burning and bhang farming. And so, with the sacred soil thus exposed, El Niño strips the land as a slaughterman flays a carcass.

He knows where that soil ends up too. He discovered this quite by chance, three weeks ago when he called in at Jimmy Mwangi’s for a glass of home brew, something he did not usually do. As he stepped into the bar, there on the T.V. was a scene that stopped him in his tracks. An aeroplane was flying over the Tana Delta, and filming the vast red slick as it spread into the Indian Ocean. It did not take him long to realize that this was the outpouring of their very own river that rose in the High Rift hills; their own good earth flowing into the sea. The image of a severed artery sprang to mind. He began to feel faint. And that is when he knew. The homeland he had fought for in his youth was simply bleeding to death – kwisho and bye-bye. He turned on his heel and went home without ordering the drink.

Even now, recalling that scene gives him a stabbing feeling in his guts. He hurries onwards. When he reaches the drier ground of the hillside path he strides out, sidestepping the chickens coming the other way. (How the devil have they got out?) But there’s no time to think about that now. He throws back the wicket gate at the end of the path, takes the long-drop key from his trouser pocket, and steps into the field. But as lifts his hand to the place where the door should be, he finds there is no lock to open. No door either. Winston’s hand hangs in space. The latrine is gone. The ground it stood on too. Nothing left but a bloody mud slick.

It takes another second to sink in. Ngai, help him. Now he knows what the jigger meant. His life’s work is gone – the plots of coffee, tea, maize, the terraced banks of cattle grass – all swept away by a massive landslide from the hills above. Only the red subsoil remains. And something else. A big rusty egg lying in the dirt where the latrine should be.

Winston drops his trousers just in time. Dear Lord. Then finishing fast, he runs to warn Rahab. He knows what that giant egg can do. Forty-four years it must have been lying there on his farm. Forty-four years waiting to blow.

‘Rahab. Woman. Move!’

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Secrets, conspiracies, tragedy, dark comedy – a fast-paced novella of interwoven tales set somewhere in East Africa

Things are going from bad to worse in Ingigi village. No one knows why five-year old Kui has gone missing. Nor does Sergeant Njau want to find out. He has his own problems, pressing matters that are far from legal. Then there is the endless rain. Will it never stop? Some Ingigi folk think it means the end of the world. Old man, Winston Kiarie, has other ideas. He senses some man-made disaster, and when it happens, it is worse than his worst imaginings. The fierce storms are causing landslides and throwing up British bombs, unexploded for forty years. Their discovery is giving the Assistant Chief ideas: how to make himself very rich. And then there’s young Joseph Maina and the primary school drop-outs thinking they have found treasure, and about to do something very foolish. Meanwhile, is anyone looking for Kui?

Available also on ePub Bud for Nook, iPod/iPhone etc HERE

Taking the slow road ~ tarrying not typing(#mywritingprocess)

On the road at #mywritingprocess with thanks to Tiny at tinylessonsblog.com

As others on this writerly blog tour have said, some writers are the bees’ knees at doing anything but write. I would be one of them. When the time comes to sit down at the desk there is the sudden compulsion to go somewhere else – anywhere else. This morning I left the computer to scrub the grout between the bathroom tiles. (So absorbing). Later I mooned over pots of recently sown runner beans, and what? Waited for them to grow? Of course. No writing skills needed in Beanstalk Land, only nifty footwork to elude man-eating giants. (Hm. And I could pick up a golden harp while I was there; learn to play, might inspire me to…) You get the picture.

So what is this doing something else all about? OCDD – obsessive compulsive displacement disorder? Why do we put ourselves through this? It was the first question I asked myself when Helen Kuusela aka Tiny at www.tinylessonsblog.com invited me to join this blog tour. I was so busy asking it, I forgot to thank her. So thank you again, Tiny, and hello to everyone on this fascinating writing safari. I forgive you, one and serially, for putting me on the spot.

As to the OCDD, I have a theory, one based on extensive personal observation. When procrastination sets in, and especially after an early full-of-promise burst, your inner truth-teller is trying to make contact with your writing brain. Something is not quite adding up. This is the moment for some pointed self-examination: are you writing yourself into a dead end? Have you started in the right place? Do the voice/situation/setting ring true? Is your plot/concept/premise sound, and does it truly have sufficient substance and energy to become the story/novel/poem you envisaged? Are you writing from within, or only from the surface?

These can be very painful questions and, rather than rolling them around your mind, I find asking them outright and OUT LOUD has better results. The inner truth-teller seems to respond better to vocalized interrogation. Also, the process of outlining the work to an audience, and by that I mean a willing listener who does not interrupt, can reveal both the intrinsic problems and the possible solutions. As you talk, the remedies to stuckness will likely pop out of your mouth. Listen out for them. A passive listening post is thus an essential aid. Your dog, cat or canary would be a good choice. Successful children’s writer, Michael Morpurgo, says he first outlines his stories to his sheep. And as I write this, I’m thinking that a Dictaphone could be a good idea too. If anyone has other notions on this, please tell me.

And now for THE questions:

1) What am I working on right now? In my head, filing cabinets and paper piles I have many works in various stages of creation: picture book scripts, teen novels, a grandiose scheme (possibly two novels for adults) set in colonial East Africa. This last project I’ve been working on for several years – stalled at various points by doubt; then by the annoying tick that says I need to do more research. (This can be another OCDD trap, so it’s wise to keep checking). I am heartened, though, when I hear writers such as Barbara Kingsolver say that it took her nearly thirty years to acquire the wisdom to write the magnificent Poisonwood Bible, or that Tolkein found himself stuck in the Mines of Moria for a whole year, wondering how to write his way out. Such admissions remind me (once I have checked back with myself AGAIN) that the time it takes to finish a piece of work, is the time it takes to finish it. Not everyone can write a book a year. And now I think of it, I’m sure I read that the marvellous short story writer, Alice Munro, takes eighteen months to write a single story. And when you read her, you know why. She distils whole novels into her short form.

For now, I’m recycling my ‘back catalogue’ of published short stories, creating new editions as Kindle e-books. I have just kindled Losing Kui, a novella originally published by Cicada Magazine in the U.S. a few years ago. On one level it is a tragi-comedic view of everyday life in a fictitious East African country during the late ‘90s. On another, you might call it an allegory, but I leave it to readers to decide what I mean by that.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? I am truly not a fan of categories, although I know marketing persons insist on them. What matters to me as a reader and writer is a well-crafted story, whether it is a 300-word picture book, Hilary Mantel’s Booker winning Wolf Hall or a Lee Child thriller. Most of my published work comprises short stories/novellas that are accessible to both adults and teens, and so I suppose you could call them crossover literature. Books for young people are anyway not so hide-bound, and may combine several so-called genres: real-life and historical narrative inter-threading with fantasy/magic realism. I find myself increasingly attracted to this combination.

3) Why do I write what I do? I had always meant to be a writer, but it was only when I went to live in Africa during the 1990s that I found a REASON to become one. In Kenya I was confronted with big landscapes and big human issues in which my own country had long played a questionable part. Suddenly I had a viewpoint and a focus and a territory. I was incensed too, by the wholesale imposition of western ‘values’ that left young Africans thinking it uncivilised that their forebears lived in mud and thatch homes. That’s one of the things that spurred me to write contemporary fiction for African young people. See (Latest books).

Some 14 years after returning to the UK, I’m still teasing out stories begun in Africa. I keep meaning to head for other lands, and one of my Ransom quick-reads for teens, Stone Robbers, is set in Guatemala. I suppose I am driven by the desire to tell stories about people who do not have a voice in the wider world, or who live in ways that are fast disappearing. In the margins between tradition and consumer modernity there are the kinds of drama and conflict that every story needs to make it work.

4) How does my writing process work? My people always arrive first. Even if I can’t clearly visualise them, I have a strong sense of them and their particular dilemma. After nearly 20 years of writing I have amassed quite a crowd, all waiting for their stories to happen/move on/finish. To discover what their stories may be, I always do a lot of research – too much probably. But without fail, the ‘what happens’ always emerges from this reading. In that sense, I do not make things up. How the works come together thereafter depends on finding some sort of imperative. This could be a writing competition deadline, or a publisher’s call for a certain kind of work. As Tiny says in her post, you do need deadlines. And perhaps, to come full circle, a lot of writer’s OCDD is also down to not knowing who will want to read/publish the work once it is done. While it remains unfinished, both failure and success are forever postponed. Keeping to your chosen path is hard to do, and I’ve written more on this HERE. But now please meet Celestine Nudana from Ghana, West Africa. She will be heading out on the next leg of the #mywritingprocess tour (26 May). She has been blogging at Reading Pleasure since 2012: http://readinpleasure.wordpress.com/ and believe me it is always a pleasure to visit her there.

Celestine is Senior Assistant Registrar at the University of Professional Studies, Accra, Ghana. She is married and has three boys. She attended the University of Ghana, Legon, where she read English and Theatre Arts, majoring in play writing. She also has a Masters in International Affairs. As well as being a passionate reader and book reviewer, she has also developed a special talent for writing haiku, although she says she is still at the learning stage. Even so, her work has been included in two recent anthologies: Western Haiku: A Collection, and Ballads, bothproduced by Dagda Publishing UK, an independent publisher who aims to show-case the freshest poetry and literature by new writers from around the world. The works are available as e-books. She has also had her flash fiction published in1 Photo 50 Authors 100 Words edited by Madison Woods.

She says of herself, “I am a romantic at heart, and love a good romance story, though I shy away from erotica. Almost all my poems focus on love, or aspects of it.” Celestine has written romantic fiction for serialization in several Ghanaian newspapers, and deployed her play writing skills to produce radio serial dramas that deal with topics including child health and female sexual reproductive health. So here is a woman who writes on many fronts. I’m looking forward to hearing what she has to say about her writing life.

Now here is my second writer introduction. She was a bit held up, so this is a last minute addition. I’ll let her speak for herself:

Hello! My name is Vashti Quiroz-Vega. I’m a writer of Suspense, Fantasy and Horror. I also enjoy mixing in some Humour and Romance into my stories. From the time I was a young kid, writing has been my passion. I’ve always been a writer; I just didn’t know it until much later. For me, it is easier to express my thoughts on paper than with the spoken word. I enjoy making people feel an array of emotions with my writing. I like my audience to laugh one moment, cry the next and clench their jaws after that. My love of animals and nature are often incorporated in my stories. You’ll read intriguing things about various animals, nature and natural disasters commingled with my character-driven novels. I love to read almost as much as I love to write. Some of my favourite authors are Stephen King, M. Night Shyamalan, Michael Crichton, Anne Rice, J. R. R. Tolkein, J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown.

http://vashtiqvega.wordpress.com

This fiction writer’s path: five things learned along the way

Writing tips: Knowing your place

Errant muse? There’s still life at the allotment

TO SEE OTHER WRITERS’ POSTS IN THIS TOUR, GO TO THE READER AND USE THE SEARCH TAG: #mywritingprocess

Rooti-toot-toot, it’s spring at the allotment: up close and vegetal

Well the old shed has made it through another year. A couple of bits have fallen off, but last year’s application of internal bracing by the Team Leader, aka Graham, has kept its tendency to list in an easterly direction in check. Would that we all had such a bracing. Over the winter it housed a poor mummified mouse, and snails still go to roost in there. I’m not showing you the inside, though. You definitely do not want to see in there.

Instead, here is the ancient greengage tree with its delicate blossom. Already I’m wondering if it will give us some fruit this year. Greengages are notoriously temperamental, and after the magnificent crop in my first year of allotmenting that had us, and all our friends and relations, dribbling with delight over bucket loads of luscious harvest, it has borne very little. That was seven years ago. Maybe this year is the year then.

There are loads of jobs to do, not least digging. The endlessly wet autumn and winter meant that winter digging was impossible, so there has been much to catch up on. Meanwhile the weeds are literally having a field day, which makes this the the season of dandelion beheading. (Sorry, dandelions). They are sprouting up all along the paths between everyone’s plots, and I’m afraid I find great satisfaction in slicing off these cheery faces with my strimmer. Their replacements are anyway there the next day, beaming vigorously.

Then there is the comfrey forest to manage. This plant I crop and cherish. You cannot have too much of it, and it obligingly grows itself in a huge clump beside the shed. If you cut it down after flowering, it will grow again and again during the summer.

Comfrey, as I have mentioned before, is the organic gardener’s dream plant. It comes in other shades, pink to purple through blue. Its ability to mine otherwise inaccessible nutrients from the soil (dynamic accumulation I believe this is called) and repurpose them in its foliage make it an endless source of cost-free fertilizer. It is one of the reasons why you can’t look in my shed. I do my brewing in there. And no. It’s not what you think.

For those who missed an earlier post on this, I stuff old compost bags with the comfrey’s top growth, seal them with clothes pegs, cut a hole in the corner of each bag, and prop it over a bucket and wait. In the warmth of the shed the vegetation soon rots down, giving out a dark and evil looking liquid that collects in the buckets. This stuff is pretty smelly, although nowhere near as pungent as the slimy residue left in the bag, which then ends up on the compost heap. The liquid I decant into old plastic bottles, and use as a feed through the growing season. It is 3 times richer in potassium that farmyard manure, but it must be diluted 1 part comfrey essence to 15 parts water.

The blurry bee above would not stay still for the shot, but that’s another good thing about comfrey. Bees like it. As I took this, I spotted at least 4 different kinds: a honey bee and three bumbles of varying liveries and sizes. Having written of the dire things that are happening to bees, it’s heartening to see so many at the allotment doing their work. Thank you, bees.

The mild winter has meant that many crops simply kept going without dying back. Yesterday I noticed that my globe artichokes have already made globes almost big enough to eat. In May? What is going on? But thank you, artichokes.

The Swiss Chard has been magnificent too and kept us going through the winter with fresh new leaves. It is only now going to seed. Nor did I sow it in the first place. It seeded itself around my plot from my neighbours’ plot. Thank you, Pete and Kate.

And now you can look at my Red Duke of York spuds, their foliage just pushing through the soil. I love the purple flush on the new growth.

And next are my over-wintered field beans (rather like broad beans I am told, but smaller and tastier). This is the first year I have tried them. The metre tall stems are covered in blossom from tip to root, and the scent is glorious. The bees are busy here too.

And last but not least, the strawberries are flowering like crazy…

And the Welsh Onions are bursting into bloom beside the Lemon Balm, although I’m not sure whether I should be stopping them from doing this. On the other hand they will look rather splendid as the flowers open, and of course make lots more seed.

And finally, the brightest face of all at the allotment, other than mine after too much digging. This is yet another lovely plant that grows itself up there with no help from me, and flowers into the winter. Its petals are lovely in salads, and it makes a good herbal tea that is said to improve pretty much any condition. I can believe it. Simply looking at this flower does you good: the orange goes right through your eyes and into your immune system. A big hand then, for the marigold. TARRAAAAH!

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Ailsa’s Travel Challenge ~ Close-up

DP Weekly Photo Challenge ~ Spring

This fiction writer’s path: five things learned along the way

1) Swimming not drowning: there will be (many) false starts

I associate intending to be a writer with learning to swim. I was ten, in my last year of primary school, when I told Mr. Williams, my very Welsh head teacher, that I meant to be a writer. I said it with great certainty, and he listened in all seriousness. He was someone I trusted implicitly. He was also the person who taught me to swim, and to me, decades later, the way he did it still seems a little miracle.

There were several non-swimmers in the senior class and one day Mr. Williams decided to remedy this life-threatening deficiency. Once a week for several weeks he drove us to the swimming pool in the school minibus. He made no concession to the occasion and still wore his smart grey headmasterly suit. Looking back, he probably did this on purpose. It showed he meant business and we were not there to play. The suit’s material had a soft metallic sheen and probably went by the name of Tricel. It somehow had a part to play.

After a couple of trips to the pool I had fully grasped the mechanics of swimming, but was unwilling to give up my rubber ring. Mr. Williams, however, was determined. He told me to walk twenty paces into the pool’s shallow end. He told me to take off the rubber ring. Then standing at the pool’s edge, he squatted down so low that his trousers strained across his knees and shone like silver. His eyes levelled with mine as I stood there – in the water – shivering – without my protecting ring. He told me to swim but I kept standing and staring at his knees, feeling silly and helpless. Then suddenly out flew his arms in a welcoming embrace. ‘Come on,’ he cried. ‘Swim to me. YOU.CAN.DO.IT.’ And such was his look of unconditional expectation that I took to the water and swam.

And the point of this story? Becoming a writer/maker/artist means learning to grow and nurture your inner Mr. Williams. Along the creative path there may be few external expressions of encouragement. But without the deep-down core of self-belief you will not have the resilience to stay the course, bear the disappointments, handle the rejection slips, or to toil and toil alone for the days, months and years it will take to learn your craft. All of which is not to discourage, but to say that you really have to want to do this.

2) Having formed your intention, do NOT wait for inspiration to strike: you can wait till the crack of doom

Of course learning to swim is not the same as being a good swimmer who can swim fifty lengths with ease and feel quite at home in the water. To become a skilled artisan of any kind, there is the long haul of apprenticeship, probably one that will never end. I, though, and like many would-be writers, went for years, carrying in my head the apparently foregone conclusion that one day inspiration would strike and I would begin to write my own stories instead of reading other people’s.

It rarely, if ever happens this way. Besides which, inspiration is only the starting point, the ‘ah-ha’ moment when your attention fixes on an overheard conversation, or collides with a character on a bus, or gets hooked on some bizarre news event that starts you asking the kind of questions that kick off the story-making process. Mostly, though, you need to seek it out. Because the fact is, even if you are not actually writing, you must be doing the internal work, mentally exploring the stories that you might one day tell, gathering material, keeping watch, feeding that tiny flame of an inkling that says ‘I do have a story to tell’. ‘I do have something important to say.’

Inspiration, then, does not arrive ‘out of blue’ or occur in a vacuum; it needs one, two or several things to rub together. You could say it’s a bit like the slow-going process of rubbing dry sticks together, and trialling likely bits of kindling to get a fire started. In that initial whoosh of a blaze taking hold all is very exciting, but it is only the start. Now the hard work really begins – keeping the fire going, finding suitable material that will burn well – fast or slowly or long enough to cook your dinner. In other words, flash-in-the-pan, quick-fire notions (inspiration) are the easy part. Thereafter comes the sourcing of materials, planning, construction and general project management. You can only truly learn how to do this by doing it. So how to begin?

3) Do not fall into the trap of thinking that reading other writers will drown out your own small voice before you even start: read, read, read…

As an adult, my writing work was largely academic: dissertations, reports, preparing educational materials in various museums. Somewhere along the line I stopped reading fiction; I feared that to do so would distract me from finding my own inspiration, my own voice, my own stories. I have met other beginner writers who said they did the same thing, and especially when it came to books that they thought might ‘compete’ with their own ideas. Yet not to read widely is another form of writer’s self-sabotage. Writers need to read anything and everything they can, and across all genres, and they need to read with attention and discernment. For instance, you can learn a huge amount about story construction by studying an infant’s picture book that contains only around 30 words (Pat Hutchins Rosie’s Walk).

In fact some of the best-crafted storytelling on the planet is for young people – and here I’m thinking of writers such as Richard Peck, Sharon Creech, Robert Cormier, Kate di Camillo, Geraldine McCaughrean, Philip Pullman, Jennifer Donnelly, David Almond. Reading good books with all senses attuned is akin to having mental conversations with other writers; far from swamping your own style/voice/subject matter, listening carefully to what they say and how they say it can help release your very own form of creative expression. This is not about copying ; it is about finding your own truthful response to other writers’ work. Writing a book or a story or a poem is not a contest with anyone else. It is your book, story, poem. Only you can write it. And if in doubt, think ‘Mr. Williams’. At some point you have to get in there and swim.

But of course, having joined the fray, then comes the endurance testing and training, the honing of skills, and goal setting.

4) Being a good writer is not the same as being a good storyteller

Some people are natural storytellers, and especially so when they come from families or cultures where oral storytelling is still practised. Even so, and no matter how you treat them later, it helps to learn the storytelling basics: the beginnings, middles and ends of a story, their possibilities, the ways to build tension and interest, how to manage revelation, crisis and resolution, what it takes to create believable worlds (real-life or science fiction), to breathe life into characters who will then ‘speak’ to readers, to make effective and affective use of language.

All these skills can be learned to some extent by much well-directed reading, including studying a few how-to-write books on the way. But taking out a subscription to a good creative writing magazine or attending a class are the more interactive and less lonely options. The disciplines of entering magazine contests or doing class exercises – reading others’ work with interest rather than envy, writing to deadlines, word counts and prescribed themes are all worth cultivating. They all build the kind of writing muscles you need to best deliver ‘the what’ of the creative process – the story.

5) Writing fiction does not mean ‘making things up’; it is all about building convincing worlds.

This is something that is easily misunderstood, and it took me some time to grasp explicitly. Fiction reveals imagined worlds and their inhabitants in ways that are truthful in. Integrity and authenticity are key objectives. The setting may be a medieval Russian monastery, a London secondary school, or a planet with two suns, but it must ring true for the reader. Its special characteristics will add depth and texture to the narrative, but above all, they will be dynamic – informing, shaping, adding drama to the characters’ behaviour/situation/dilemmas. This requires considerable research and construction work by the writer, but with the caveat that, at the end of the process, only the writer ever needs to know all this stuff. The reader wants only the most telling details, the ones that, like literary hyperlinks, will take them straight into that special place and engage them wholeheartedly with the characters’ lives. (A fine example of this is Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall where she uses historical, social and political contexts to reveal the life and times of Thomas Cromwell.)

To achieve this level of ‘reality’ requires the writer to have strong reasons for telling a particular story. As I’ve said, creating a story from start to finish requires drive and stamina. Passion, pain, compassion and anger are great spurs, but their energy needs to be channelled judiciously. (No ranting or heavy-handed moralizing required and the writer’s self should keep well out of the way). The research part of the project may also demand a whole new reading schedule (encyclopaedias, atlases, internet content, telephone directories, newspapers etc) and, where possible, physically immersing yourself in the places where the story is set.

This is all about knowing your territory as an expert guide would know it. Only then can the alchemy begin. Or perhaps shape-shifting is a better analogy. Because this is one of the most important of all the things I have come to learn from the practise of being a writer: the writing must come from the inside out; writers must inhabit their character’s minds, shoes and underpants; whatever it takes to get inside their skin. For me, this usually means starting with the feet rather than the knickers department. When I wrote about a street girl called Jessicah, she was conjured by a ‘feeling’ in the balls of my feet as she tramped in thin-soled shoes through the African highlands. Years later I can still summon that particular sensation and know it is Jessicah, and start seeing the world again through her eyes. All of which is very strange when you think about it, and probably the reasons why most writers keep writing. For the final truth is that even well-published writers struggle to make a living from book sales alone. Writing then, first and foremost and anyway, has to be done for the love of the thing.

Tish Farrell writes short fiction to entice unkeen teen readers to read in the Shades series at Ransom Publishing. She also writes for Heinemann Junior African Writers, Zimbabwe Publishing House and Phoenix Publishers East Africa. Her short story Flight came third in last year’s International Bath Short Story Award.

Writerly Reflections

Street-wise on Mombasa Beach

Mombasa Beach is as busy as any street, and like any downtown district anything can be traded there. In the margin between ocean and hinterland, people feel they can live outside accepted moral and cultural bounds. Kikuyu boys may dress up as Maasai to cash in the ‘warrior’ cachet that is so attractive to European women; white women of a certain age think it OK to flaunt themselves on the sands with lovely young Kenyan boys whose real hope is to be adopted or sponsored through school; dope can be bought along with the kanga wraps and hand-carved giraffes. All, then, may not be quite what it seems in this Indian Ocean ‘paradise’.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

Looking inside ‘The House of Belonging’: remembering artist Sheilagh Jevons

The following is the account of a conversation I had with Sheilagh in 2014, a year before her death. She is sadly missed.

I thought it was time I welcomed good friend and artist, Sheilagh Jevons, to this blog. She lives a few miles from me along Wenlock Edge, in the little village of Easthope. There, and in her studio not far away, she creates arresting work that explores the sense of belonging that people have with landscape. From time to time she and I have involving conversations about the creative process – the stumbling blocks, the sources of inspiration, the way we work (or in my case, don’t work).

A few weeks ago she came round for coffee. I wanted to ask her about a painting I had seen in her studio. I had thought it striking and mysterious, and wanted to know what she meant by it. Besides which, it is hard to resist the opportunity to grill an artist when you have one captured inside your house.

The header image is a small detail from a work called The House of Belonging. This figure has appeared in Sheilagh’s other works and represents women artists. Some of their names are written on the smock, artists perhaps not well known to the general public. Here she pays homage to their work, but also alludes to the fact that, overall, very little work by women artists is to be found in museums. The writing of names and of repeated key-words and equations is characteristic of many of Sheilagh’s pieces. It was one of the things I was going to ask her about. But first, the painting.

It is a large canvas, some 4 feet (120cm) square. The next photo gives a better sense of scale. Here it is hanging in Sheilagh’s studio:

I asked Sheilagh how the work began. She told me that some years ago the idea of belonging had become very important to her. As she says on her website:

Our ‘sense of belonging’ ripples out from our homes to our village, street, town, county, region and country and help to shape our identity…

Key, then, to her work is a sense of connection to land and how that relationship defines us. This in turn has physical expression in community repositories, the places where we keep artefacts, our history, the knowledge of ancestors – all the familiar things we recognise and which tell us something of who we are. In other words, the museum, or as Sheilagh describes it: the house of belonging. The script running down the left-hand margin of the painting in fact repeats over and over the words ‘the museum’, ‘the house of belonging’. The repetition reflects the strong political stance of Sheilagh’s work.

To me this is ‘the writing on the wall’, a statement of collective ownership; The House of Belonging staking a claim. Its contents are manifestations of how humans have interacted with their landscape and the place they call home. Sheilagh also says that adding text creates a certain texture; that the sense of a hand moving across the work creates a connection with her, its maker. The wheeled blue structure, then, is the House of Belonging. The words written inside say ‘everybody’s knowledge’. This is written twice so there can be no mistake. It feels like something to stand up for, a rallying call.

It is also important, Sheilagh says, that the House can move across the landscape to where the people are, rather than the other way round; this makes it more egalitarian. Inside the House are images and artefacts, symbols of creativity. Some of them are stereotypical of ‘heritage’ and therefore instantly recognisable. For instance, the chess pieces (centre left in the painting) are derived from the Scottish Isle of Lewis Chess Set in the British Museum. The set dates from AD 1150-1200 and suggests Norse influence or origins.

Sheilagh copied and simplified the images from a sales catalogue that specialises in heritage reproductions. The placing of the queen in the central position is also significant. She says she feels bound to redress an imbalance: the fact that in most of our media women only occupy centre stage when they are being commodified in some way. And then there is the mathematical equation painted in red beneath the red tree, centre right of the painting. The presence of equations in Sheilagh’s works adds a further layer meaning for her, and although she doesn’t think it necessary to explain them, she is always very pleased when people recognise them. This particular one refers to mathematical research by American academics in the 1920s called The Geometry of Paths. The appearance of equations in Sheilagh’s paintings also has more personal origins. She tells me she started to include them some years ago – after she had been helping her daughter revise for her Maths and Physics A’ level exams. It is another connection. There are many more signifiers in the work: motifs that have links and resonance with Sheilagh’s other works. The red tree above the equation is a symbol of timelessness, indicating ‘forever’ in human terms. The red arrow in the top right creates a sense of energy and direction; a ‘look what’s here’ sign. There is the sense of a force field, drawing people to the House of Belonging.

Finally, we talked about the overall composition. Sheilagh says that she began the work some years ago after she noticed that a small building denoting ‘museum’ often appeared in her landscapes. This time she wanted it to have it as the main subject, and to make it both an enticing and a mysterious place. At this point she also created the friezes at the top and bottom of the picture, these in order to suggest other layers of reality behind the surface painting. The top frieze is the wider, timeless landscape of which the museum is also symbol. The bottom frieze is deliberately ambiguous and suggestive; it invites the viewer to consider what might lie behind.

And having created the work’s essential structure, the painting was then abandoned. It was only some fifteen months later, when Sheilagh, looking for a large canvas to start another work, returned to it. She was fully intending to paint over it, but when she looked at it again she suddenly knew how to proceed and completed the work very swiftly. She says it probably is not quite finished, and suspects that something may still need to be added. In the meantime she has been occupied with a large body of work relating to Scotland.

Notes and reference materials from Sheilagh Jevon’s studio