Au revoir 2012...

Ramsgate en fete December 2012

Happy Christmas!

By the time December arrives I've usually forgotten what we were doing earlier this year - and 2012 might have included the Jublilee and the Olympics but it hasn't exactly been a "stand out year" for us - apart from Ned's A-levels.  He got decent grades and is having a gap year before going to Norwich in September 2012 to study Politics, Literature and Culture at UEA.   Apparently the most godless place in the UK (despite a plethora of churches) Norwich is a place we are very fond of - not least because a number of our friends live there.  Ned and I had a great visit there in February, when we stayed with Marge and John Cullen and saw Jeremy Hall (Ned's godfather) and fitted in a trip to the Sainsbury Visual Arts centre where I wrote 2,000 words for the book re-write... a thoroughly good time in other words.   We're looking forward to going back in September to deliver Ned - and were delighted to discover that another of Ned's cadre of South London NCT May/June 1993 babies - Ben Baulch Jones- is already there.

Every year when I write this letter I fantasize about the vastly improved year I will be reporting on next year... and this year the fantasy hasn't been enacted either, although I did have a lot of interest from an agent in my novel, The Romantic Feminist - she demanded a re-write and I laboured mightily to produce one, but in vain - after hanging onto it for another 6 months, she told me a couple of weeks ago (just after the anniversary of the first submission) that she didn't like the plot - that would be the plot line she'd suggested, if my memory serves me? A kind friend tells me it simply means she didn't know the right editor to market it to! Heigh-ho, so, another onslaught on agents coming up shortly. More positively, I do have a very small publisher interested in it but we're both being a bit cautious.  In the meantime I have completed the first volume of Conscience -  which I feel is more marketable, since it is set in WW1 - but at present, having had aspersions cast over my plotting,  I barely dare revise the first draft in case I muck it up even more....

Mark's major achievement this year has been to create a 3D reconstruction drawing of Selborne Abbey in Hampshire for a client - an image that is unfortunately too big to upload here.
 and to grow a Movember moustache... for a myeloma charity in support of a friend of ours.  This looks a bit of a combination between Oswald Moseley and Ned Flanders - but it suits him better than this picture suggests. He also went for a jolly weekend in Belgium with the choir - Chimay - twinned with Ramsgate is a brewing town, where the inhabitants enjoy dressing in medieval costume and drinking - so quite like Ramsgate, apart from the medieval costume.

Illness and mortality seem to have dominated this year's news.  Although our immediate families have survived the last 12 months, we have lost friends - particularly Mike Marwick - and other friends have lost family members, and others are facing, or have survived in one fortunate case, close brushes with death.  There is also the terrible sight of one's slightly older contemporaries exhibiting signs of mental deterioration.  Very very upsetting to see bright, interesting people disappearing before one's eyes.  No coincidence that in the cases of the three people this is happening to, lifelong heavy smoking and drinking have been (and in one case continue to be) a major factor.   All this is galvanizing me a bit - and (not for the first time)  I lost the vital 10% of my body weight in the last few months (I am hoping not to put it all back on over Christmas - but I'm already wishing I hadn't tried out the chocolate Christmas cake recipe on my Book Group for our Christmas Feast.  They didn't eat it all and it has more calories in a slice than a child of 10's Recommended Daily Allowance.  Mind you the recipe says it serves 12 - but that would be 12 Brobdingnagians - it would have easily gone around 2 or 3 Last Suppers and they'd still have had crumbs left to gather up.)

Finn's school career has been precarious.  He hates school - I keep telling him it will get better - I hope I'm right.  He's still playing the cornet - recently with more enthusiasm, currently playing in his school band and hoping to be promoted to the genuinely impressive senior band, he's also dabbling with the ukele orchestra... he does a lot of photography, and a small amount of skateboarding, and he's produced some good paintings.

Ned & Finn survey the Channel from Cap Blanc Nez

Ned hasn't landed any glamorous or lucrative gap year work - he's working in a micropub for less than the National Minimum Wage - to my horror!  In his spare time he's writing and recording songs which are getting better and better - and psyching himself and his girlfriend Gina to perform them publicly one day.  On the job front I am hoping to help him find something better to do in the new year - so if you hear of anything let us know.  He's still playing the guitar and has got to Grade 5, but the sax is gathering dust.

Ned and Finn enjoying the glory of Margate - the Turner Contemporary

Apart from writing and negotiating with our creditors, my other financial contribution was running the B&B side of the house - this is providing an erratic but welcome stream of income, via the AirBnB website - and we've never met anyone we didn't like. Mostly the guests praise the bread and jam and don't mention the somewhat Bohemian standards of tidiness and cleaning, although there was one woman who complained she hadn't seen much of me - she may have had a lucky escape.  Anyway we have had return visitors - and best of all, a visit from Ali Gibbons - who came with his 2 Steves (colleagues) for a weekend, so we had a great evening and it gave me and Al the chance to have the "what do you think of the show so far?" conversation about our lives since we first met in the radical theatre group at UCL in 1976...  We've also had a succession of foreign language students - most of whom are notable for their disinclination to speak English (I do it, so they don't have to?) but some of whom have been fun.

Elsewhere, I had my usual involvement in the arts festival, the Summer Squall - this year with a free open air opera, and a Noggin the Nog premier, and a steam fair.  Have also been to a really good opera - a Glyndeborne production of Nozze di Figaro in Canterbury - almost the first time I've seen a proper, full fledged opera with people I've actually heard of singing in it since we moved here.  I am not pining for London exactly - just for better quality art here. Amazingly a superb commercial art gallery specialising in prints has just opened two minutes' walk from my house.  It opened with a fabulous exhibition of Peter Blake prints (they are on the wish list!) and will be following up with Picasso prints - for sale - at the end of my road in January - come down if you fancy buying some!  I like the owner, but can't help wondering whether she's judged the local demographic correctly, however she seems to have sold quite a few of the Blakes - and not the "cheap" ones either, so perhaps it's true that we have a lot of scruffy, unflashy wealthy people here as has been rumored.

Mark's work is still a bit slow because of the lack of property development going on.  This is a mixed blessing since small property developers usually are (a) unwilling to pay for archaeological recording (b) very slow to pay for it when it has been completed and invoiced - so the lumpy cashflow continues, and I foresee an interesting discussion with HMRC in January.  Sigh.  Nevertheless, he had fun tracing WW2 remains around Pegwell Bay, including a fougasse (no, not the bread!) and there's been just about enough work to keep us going.

But never mind, because next year (The Chinese Year of the Jam (tomorrow)) of course will be the year Mark finishes Claudius's Elephants, Ned lands a dream media job for the spring, Finn takes all his GCSE's early and does brilliantly, a documentary company options the elephant book, both my novels find a publisher, and someone takes out an option on the WW1 trilogy for a short tv drama series... and we buy the bottom of our neighbour's garden and put a small swimming pool in it, get the roof fixed, repair the conservatory, install a heat exchange heating system, and solar panels and of course, re-pay our creditors, and with luck have some money left over for a Peter Blake print or two.

In the mean time I am taking this song very much to heart - and if you have time do listen to it (isn't the multi-media world fun?).  It's a secular song, but with a Christmasish sentiment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTXljIqxRE  William de Vaughn! (Who he?  Well, perhaps if you weren't a regular at the Wigan Pavilion you may be forgiven for asking... Google him!).

Alternatively, St. Mary's - somewhere on Romney Marsh - had a series of these encouraging texts:-

So, we hope you have a happy Christmas, and a really fantastic 2013, and I am off to rescue the Christmas cake from becoming a burnt offering.  Wish you could be here to share it!