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| Stained Glass Star - Bristol Cathedral |
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
Having decided to give up Hope - as a New Year Resolution, 2014 has been dominated by hopes of one kind or another. Some are about to be fulfilled (I think).
2014 was a much better year fiscally. Mark has had quite a few, mostly small, jobs, entailing trips to such exotic and far-flung spots as Havering, Cambridge, Bedford, Great Missenden and Eastbourne). Some of these jobs should have second phases in 2015, so Architectural Archaeology finally has a work pipeline of sorts again.
For me the new year started in mid January when my friend Marion suggested I work for her daughter as an English tutor to struggling GCSE pupils in a Canterbury school. I would like to report that the kids all flourished under Mrs Chips' benevolent regime, but not one of them passed - in fact the school had worse than usual GCSE English results... but I don't think the tutors can take too much of the blame, the problems were rather deeper than that. It was an eye-opener in lots of ways: argumentative kids who don't know how to argue, kids desperate for new ideas, words and stimulation, but who never read, so haven't absorbed good enough English to write well enough to get over the fairly low bar of the exam... depressing.
The major change this year was the fact that both our parents decided to sell properties, Stella is downshifting to Cardiff to live in a MacCarthy & Stone residential block - and my father is selling his house in Bayswater, where I spent about 8 years of my childhood. Both are sharing some of their proceeds with their offspring - so the prospect of repaying debts of all kinds is very imminent, who knows, we may one day orbit Planet Agreeable! Of course, this news started a wave of hope, and an inevitable backwash of disappointments as sales fell through and solicitors and purchasers dithered, however the Stamp Duty tax seems to have clarified everyone's minds wonderfully. So it's an ill wind... (I always regard a Tory Autumn Statement as an "ill wind").
March and April were rather tricky, since my father, never one to do the sensible thing, or to take advice, slipped on some wet paving and broke his hip. As his mother broke her hip and got pneumonia and died at 91 we all worried that this would have the same outcome. Happily it did not, although his determination to leave hospital early led to a couple of picaresque episodes, and our efforts to get him to do his physiotherapy exercises at home were pretty thankless... as a result his mobility is not all it could be. However, he managed to "totter about" and go to France for a couple of weeks with Coellie to Lou Baghurst eco-cottage in Britanny - and go canoeing. For a while he thought he'd sell his home too - since it is too much to cope with, but he's having second thoughts now.
July was a rather bizarre and miserable month for me - on 1st July I went to have my hair cut with Marion (see above); she'd recently announced that she had liver cancer, but I was hoping that she'd have a year or so and some periods of remission. I guessed something was up from her unusual behaviour that day, and four days later she died. She wasn't an old-established friend, but one who had become increasingly important to me, introduced by my old school friend Anna Taylor. Her death was painfully intertwined with the final days of my much-loved cousin Strat Caldecott who went into a hospice at this point and died a couple of weeks later. Then there was Marion's memorial service, followed by Strat's funeral, full Catholic grandeur, with Faure's Requiem sung as part of the liturgy - it was incredibly beautiful, a hundred times more moving than hearing it as a concert piece. A minor miracle occurred just before Strat died: he had wanted to be buried near Tolkien, but the cemetery was full, until someone vandalised some trees, opening up a space for Strat, who as well as being a theological writer, was a great lover of Tolkien (and author of The Power of the Ring about Christian themes in Lord of the Rings). It was a small bright event in a very grim period for his family and everyone who loved him.
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| Mark, Kate & Ned actually on holiday! In a hot place! Uzes - Photo by Finn |
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| Finn in a medieval garden |
For me the highlight of the holiday was the bit near the end when we turned off the motorway and began a nice leisurely drive through the Loire Valley - countryside, rivers, architecture, Richelieu... bliss. That's where I want to go next time, if only to re-visit the Abbaye de Fontevraud - where Henri II and Eleanor of Aquitaine are buried. I especially liked Eleanor's tomb, where she is reclining with a book. There was a rather nice Oulipo installation going on as well. Another week somewhere to recover after the holiday would have been nice.
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| The eerie light on Eleanor's book is something to do with the installation - not freakish photography |
We came back to the usual bills and life bumps - but also to some work for Mark. We were also faced with the grim prospect of the loathesome Nigel Farage standing for parliament in our constituency... time to gird our loins and oppose UKIP - which has brought us some new friends, and brought us closer to others. It is fun, but frightening to think of having him as our MP - although I doubt he'd be here much. The prospect of UKIP holding the balance of power on the local council is more worrying - but half of them are former Tories, so it probably wouldn't make all that much difference. I don't know where the idea that they represent something new in politics came from! They seem to be some sort of ill-favoured lovechild of the Conservative Party Monday Club (does that still exist?).
When not battling the Nasty Party, I revised the new novel - The Gospel According to Darren, and sent it to a couple of agents, who promptly rejected it. I immediately became disconsolate - and decided it was the worst novel I had ever written... which as it only took 3 or 4 months is quite likely. I am planning a re-jig shortly and a re-submission to EVERY AGENT IN THE UK... Meanwhile all I want to do is get on with my really fantastic new novel The Malice of Fairies (why does it seem that this novel will be the one to break through the indifference of the market?). There is beginning to be a pattern: write a novel, submit it as much as you can bear to, take as many rave (and other) rejections as you can stand - and then stop submitting it because you are too busy with the next one. Periodically send it to someone, meanwhile grumble and angst to one's long-suffering writer friends (Tara, Kirstie, Eyvor, Jane and Anna have all provided supportive feedback this year)... As for the previous novels - The Romantic Feminist may end up succumbing to self-publishing; The Ash Grove has been praised, but I was told by a couple of agents that the UK market for WW1 novels was FULL- however 2 New York agents are giving a full read (very slowly) - so perhaps something will come of that. Elsewhere, more positively, I've been asked to join a team working on a tv thriller series which is being taken up by a couple of production companies jointly... so that's pretty exciting. Or it would be, if I was allowing myself to believe it would really happen. It is a pretty tremendous series, dealing with all manner of political and social issues ...and I can say that because I didn't dream it up.
In theory, if all goes well, I will start earning some money from the screenwriting, but in the meantime I continue to earn modest amounts through catering occasionally, and doing the Airbnb thing - and having the dreaded foreign students (a pretty pleasant batch this year - a Russan, a Spaniard, a Ukranian, some Chinese, and a Saudi boy - who was here for Ramadam...not much fun for him, since the days are so long here. Still, he was full of the joys, asking when we expected Europe to convert to Islam... he was unconvinced when I said "Never"). Next summer we will just have AirBnB guests, and spend a lot of time washing sheets!
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| Finn & Ned indulge in cat worship - while preparing the garden for a Midsummer Middle Eastern Feast - photo by Anna Gizowska |
Ned and Finn - the rising hope of the Samuel family - are proceeding towards adulthood satisfactorily. Ned is in his second year at UEA,and in a new band. He is writing a lot for various student papers, and is thinking about becoming a journalist. Finn and I are still arguing about whether his GCSE results were better or worse than my O-levels. His school refused to allow him to take certain subjects at A-levels, but he got his first choices, Physics and Media Studies - which should support his desire to get into the film industry - he's also doing English (incredible for a boy who read no books between about October 2009 and August this year) and Classical Civilisation (more books: Homer and Aeschylos so far)... so we are having conversations about (appropriately) Great Expectations and The Odyssey. He seems to be enjoying these subjects more than the other two - clearly the literary thing is a bit hard-wired in this family.
Mark's Great Epic - Claudius's Elephants is plodding to a close, now nearly at the final chapter. I expect I will be cruelly editing it at the end of 2015 - if I haven't become too busy, important and successful by then of course.
It has been incredibly nice having a bit more dosh - I feel as if I have been paralysed and have begun to regain my capacity for movement. It feels like we are back in the world again.
We really know what we're talking about when we wish you all a prosperous New Year as well as the other good things. So, have a wonderful Christmas and an equable 2015!
