Evening light

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

This was what I saw when I took the dogs out just now:

Someone liked it so much, she staged a sit-in, and refused to come inside. She clearly thinks that if she shuts her eyes, she can pretend I am not there:

Writing, Day Four

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I am demanding of my class. I gather them into a room and talk and talk and talk at them. I get rather over-excited and wave my arms about like that professor with the moustache from my childhood. Was he called Magnus Something? I rattle along at seventy miles an hour. I hit them with endless Hemingway quotes.

(Although, actually, why would I not? He was such a beautiful writer, and he said such achingly true things about writing.)

Then, then, I make them do five minutes of free writing. I tell them not to think, not to edit, not to listen to any of the critical voices in their heads, but to keep their hand moving over the page until I say stop.

As if that were not enough, I make them read what they have written, out loud. I know it is not climbing a savage mountain, or fighting in the desert, or racing at Le Mans, but it is a very, very frightening thing to have to do. They must reveal themselves in front of a room of strangers.

What they write is always good, even if they hardly believe that themselves. There is always something in each piece that surprises and delights. But sometimes, it is more than good. Sometimes, it is great. Today, they did great writing. It was as if they had all gone off into a huddle and decided that this was the moment to raise their game. And it wasn't just that there was one remarkable piece; they were all remarkable. Each one, in its radically different way, was a thing of beauty. I cannot tell you how happy it made me.

I  keep saying: if you are true to yourself, and you do honour to the language, you can write well. I keep saying there is not some special writers' club to which you must belong; there is not a writers' pedigree, or upbringing, or qualification. It is not invitation only. I think this is absolutely true. I start to think: the only difference between the writer and the  non-writer is the willingness to work at it, to do it every day, to accept the graft, and the inevitable disappointments, and the dark night of the soul moments. It damn well is hard, but I think perhaps the only line between achieving it or not is a determination to persevere.

Here is some of what I spoke of today:

I talked of grammar, which I don't think I mentioned last year. I am a stickler, not because I am one of those grumbly, everything's gone to the dogs types, but because I crave clarity above all things. Most grammatical rules exist so that the reader does not become confused. The misuse of the apostrophe, and the howler that is the dangling modifier are the worst in this regard. They make the reader stop, in order to work out exactly what it is you are trying to say. Baffling your reader is a cardinal sin. So: become the mistress of the apostrophe; hunt down every last dangler and shoot it on sight. The lovely Miss Lynne Truss is your best friend in this quest. Get a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves if you have any doubts. She says everything that needs to be said much better than I ever could.

On the other hand, some grammatical rules may be broken. I think it is important to know the major ones before you trangress. Correct usage is not some horrid straitjacket, but a liberation. If you know what you should be doing, you are much freer to decide how much you want to play with the language. Uncertainty is not liberating. I always think of Picasso, and his blue period. He became a master draftsman; he knew all the rules of perspective and form. Once he had done that, he could let himself go, and put people's noses behind their knees.

As long as there is clarity, you can please yourself. I quite often start a sentence with a preposition. I love the subjunctive, but it is not entirely necessary. 'If I was rich,' is as clear as 'If I were rich'. Somerset Maugham said: 'The subjunctive form is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.' In the same way, occasionally an infinitive may be split. Sometimes you need to boldly go. Raymond Chandler famously declared: 'When I split an infinitive, it damn well stays split'.

I do think that the semi-colon is your finest friend. This is a small, enduring obsession of my own, so feel free to ignore it. I find it such a lovely, supple, subtle piece of punctuation, and could not exist without it.

I think that the exclamation mark is your deadliest foe. Scott Fitzgerald said it was like laughing at your own jokes. I would suggest that you only use it if there is absolutely no other way that you can achieve the effect you crave. The jingly little rule 'If in doubt, leave it out' is apposite here.

I talked also of memory. Your memories are your treasure chest. Mine them, use them, let them act as seeds from which characters and stories may grow. We are the sum of our memories. Do not worry too much about utter accuracy. Three people will remember a single event in radically different ways. In a sense, all three will be right. Don't let anyone say: no, you are wrong, it did not happen like that. Your recollections belong to you.

Never forget that what may seem quite mundane and commonplace to you will be exotic and fascinating to someone else. The small, everyday things can be the most telling. I love the mass observation diaries of the Second World War, which were often written by unsung, ordinary women. They were people who were miles from the centres of power; they were not on the front line; they were not the makers of policy or the titans of history. Yet in some ways I find their daily records more riveting than those written by famous men.

One of my students asked: what do you do with all the ideas rushing about in your head? It was a good question. First, I said, thank the inspiration angels that you have a surfeit of ideas, rather than a surly, blank mind. I am so used to having a head full of quarrelling thoughts that I take it for granted. It is like that great Daisy Ashford line about the gentleman leaping on his horse and riding off in all directions. But I see that if it is not a familiar state, it can feel overwhelming. So: write them all down. Put them in folders and files. Some will never come to anything; accept the redundancy. Do not mourn stillborn ideas; trust that many more will come. Once you start noticing everything and questioning everything and practising the idea I spoke of before about being present, you will have ideas a go-go.

Sometimes, you will choose one of your thrilling ideas and start to make a story of it. You may find that you get to chapter three and the whole thing stutters to a halt. Give it a week or so. You may be caught in the fear trap, or stunned by your critical voices. If the thing does not fire up after that time, graciously let it go.

I think you can generally tell which of your ideas is the really good one, because it will not let you go. It will bug you. It will tug at your sleeve like a small child who yearns for ice cream. It will wake you at absurd hours of the night. That's the one. It might not be the one which you consider most commercial, or which you think will impress some grand London publisher, or which you are sure will hurl you to the top of the bestseller list. Don't worry about that. Remember that JK Rowling was turned down by publisher after publisher because they all said no-one wanted to read boarding school stories any more. Trying to second-guess the market is a fool's errand. Write the idea that you absolutely must write, because if you don't, it will give you no peace.

 

Today's photographs follow on from one of the themes of today's class, about not overlooking the small, the usual, the seemingly unremarkable. One of the things I like to do with my enchanting new camera is take pictures of things which are not particularly beautiful or special, and see if, by fiddling with the light or the colour of the angle, I can invest them with something interesting. I am not at all certain that I succeed, but I like the experiment:

An old, papery, cracked garlic.

A dead marjoram flower, which did not get cut back from last year.

A strand of wild grass.

A nettle.

Tree bark, one of my perennial obsessions.

A dry, fallen leaf.

Daisies.

A blown rose.

If you have any energy left to read, here is what I did in last year's class.

Thank you all so much for bearing with me. I meant to make these posts much leaner and meaner than those I wrote last year, but my fatal tendency to ramble has, as usual, got the better of me. Thank you for your lovely, generous comments. It is thrilling to know that you are out there, reading along.

Writing, Day Three

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Today really is going to be brief, because I am shattered. I sometimes think that giving these writing workshops is the most rewarding thing I ever do. It is partly because of the glorious feeling of being of some, small use, even though I do hear myself rattling on and wonder. It is also because I do it in my own village, so there is a wonderful sense of being part of the local community, which Alfred Adler said was one of the three requirements for human happiness. And it is because I get the thrilling delight of hearing my students' writing come alive, day by day. As an added bonus, I have the sheer pleasure of you, my virtual blogging community, coming here and leaving your intensely kind comments. Thank you so much for them all.

So, it is absolutely good. For all that, I can hardly think or speak when I get home.

Today, I spoke mostly about fiction:

I banged on quite a lot about the vital importance of knowing your characters. Hemingway said they are like icebergs: even if you only write the visible one eighth above the waterline, you must know the invisible seven eighths. Live with them, talk to them, interview them. I find this last one exceptionally helpful; I pretend I am John Humphreys, and throw them hardball questions. I like to do this in the car, which can lead to embarrassment when I am stopped at traffic lights and people can observe me talking away into vacancy.

The main reason for knowing your characters to their toes is  so they come alive on the page, and you are not left struggling with types, or stereotypes, or poor, one-dimensional creatures. The second reason is that I believe story comes from character. If you start off with a vital protagonist, plot will come. If you begin with a strict story, no matter how fiendishly clever, and try to shoehorn characters into it, you may find yourself in terrible trouble once you hit the half-way mark.

Both story and character start with the question: what if? You cannot ask it enough. What if, what if, what if?

The seed for a character can be the most mundane, unremarkable thing. It could be a mania for order, a fear of heights, a habit of singing tin pan alley songs out of tune. Follow where it takes you. Imagine a woman who hates anchovies. Why does she? Was there a terrible anchovy-related incident in her dark past? Does she merely dislike the idea of anchovies? Did the person who broke her heart eat them straight from the tin?

Character arc is important. If the heroine of your story ends up exactly the same as she began, your readers may experience a swooning sense of disappointment. The character development does not have to be violent or operatic or illogically vast; small, subtle shifts are the most realistic and satisfying.

Think of the idea of tension and momentum. Resist the temptation to explain everything, to dump too much information at once, to spell everything out. Drop a teasing trail of breadcrumbs for the readers to follow. Trust them to read between the lines. You want them to ask the question: what happens next?

A brilliant trick is to start a scene half way through. Your hero does not have to open the gate, walk up the path, wipe his boots on the doormat, lift the latch, enter the hall. Have him in the room. BANG - he is there. Remember the magical capacity you have as a writer to shift your characters through time and space.

Kurt Vonnegut said a glorious thing about character:

'When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make the character want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralysed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.'

So, in that vein, I always ask: what do they want? What do they fear? What is at stake here?

I get furious about the old saw of: write what you know. Someone cleverer than I once said, 'What did Kafka know? The insurance business?' I think you should write what fascinates you, what you want to find out about. That is what the great resource that are the internet and your local library and books written by experts are there for.

Resist labels. (I think one should do this in life, as well as in writing.) No one is just a beauty, or a brain, or a swot, or a man of action, or a sinner, or a saint. There is a fatal human tendency to put people into nice, neat little boxes. Most people are seething morasses of complexity and contradiction. Don't be afraid to give that to your characters.

 

Two more general notes:

Try not to fall into the terror of not being original. There are seven stories in the world, and they have already been told. The point is: you have not told them. No one else on earth has your exact set of experiences, collection of neurones, or spiralling strands of DNA. You are unique, by your very nature. If you learn to trust your own voice, you will be original, without even trying.

Keep a constant guard out for dead language that lies on the page like an old, fat fish. Worn phrases, clichés, platitudes, jargon, are all death to good prose. At the same time, it can be self-defeating to turn yourself inside out like a pretzel in order to come up with some new coinage. Play around with the familiar; sometimes a simple change in word order may make an ancient collocation fresh again. Sometimes, you may want to use an old, known phrase, because you love it, or because it feels right. I'm not sure you have to banish every single cliché on principle. I think that if there is a rule, it is: never use one without thinking about it first.

 

Ah, as always, not quite as brief as I intended. One day, I shall learn the art of saying what I want to say in seven mere lines.

If you want to see what I did this time last year, follow the link here.

Today's pictures are the roses from my garden, for no particular reason at all:

 

Happy writing.

Writing, Day Two

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It always amazes me how these classes work. I say classes, but I am not really teaching. I don't think you can teach someone how to write. I tell my students everything I can think of that I know about writing, every last thing I have picked up over twenty years, and hope that some of it sticks. Sometimes, it is hard to know whether it is of any use. They are very polite, and listen quietly as I talk and talk and talk, and I cannot quite tell whether any of what I am saying is relevant to them, or what they signed up for, or of any practical use at all. Sometimes I see them looking gently puzzled, and I think: am I talking absolute nonsense? Are they fearing for my mental health when I speak of living with the voices in your head?

The problem with offering any writing advice is that what works for one person does nothing for another. I keep saying: there are no unimpeachable rules. Then I give them three golden rules. Kill your darlings; question all your assumptions; never use any other word except 'said' when writing dialogue. (She trilled, he sneered, she shrieked, he chortled are proper writing crimes, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.) Then I say: of course these are only rules if you want to make them so. A slight look of confusion comes over the class.

Anyway, yesterday I spoke of the great Dorothea Brande, and her seminal book, Becoming a Writer. Her great idea is that you should get out of bed every morning and go straight to your desk and write, without thinking, for twenty minutes. In this way, you build your writing muscle, and you tap into the subconscious, the dreaming part of your brain that is only accessible before the daily demands of the world catch you in their quotidian grip.

I think that twenty minutes, the moment you wake, is quite a lot to ask. But I do love the idea of this kind of free writing, as a regular exercise. Even if it is only five minutes, some time towards the start of the day, it can produce unexpected miracles.

Today I said, tentatively: did anyone do morning writing? Hands shot up; faces broke into smiles. I was astounded. One gentleman was so excited by his morning writing that he asked if he could read it out.

It was marvellous. It was poetic and mysterious and unexpected. He was so thrilled by what he had done that his enthusiasm filled the room. 'It was like a gift,' he said. It shifted the entire dynamic of the group. Everyone else seemed to catch his excitement; I felt amazingly vindicated, thinking that perhaps what I was saying did have some use after all. A new purpose and spirit entered the class. I threw away my lesson notes, and talked instead of some of the things that had come up in the short piece of writing we had just heard.

People seemed emboldened. There were interesting questions and intelligent interjections. We did a five minute writing exercise, which produced such tremendous work that we did not even stop for lunch, but just charged on until two o'clock.

They are good and brave, my students. Today, I asked them to write about fear, and even though it frightened them, they did it well and honestly. I can tell them about voice and point of view and whether you should make a detailed book plan or not, but I think the most important thing I can do is try to give them a safe place where they can allow their own unique voice to take wing. I want them to leave their doubts at the door, and show themselves what they are capable of.

 

Here are a few of the things I said today:

I talk a great deal about writing habits. This does not just mean getting into a solid routine, or learning to still the cruel critical voices in your head, or doing your free writing exercises. It is also about state of mind. I think that writers notice everything, question everything, invest small, overlooked things with significance. Nothing is dull, to a writer. Even dullness is interesting, once you really start thinking about it.

If there is one rule it is: read, read, read. Read until your eyes ache and the light is gone. Personally, I think you should read up. You may never reach the diamond perfection of The Great Gatsby, but read Fitzgerald to see what a master can do with prose. Read the best writers in your chosen field, so that you have something marvellous to aspire to. Set the bar high. Do not be intimidated if you fail to reach it; you will never be quite as good as you wish to be, and that's all right. If you are shooting for the moon and you miss, at least you will be aiming in the right direction.

If you feel stale and tight, and you have a day when your savour for language is gone, and words feel dusty under your fingers, go to the great poets. I find a salutary dose of TS Eliot will bring vigour back, every time. That yellow fog that rubs its back along the window pane; those women, in the room, coming and going, talking of Michelangelo. Do I dare disturb the universe? Do I dare eat a peach? Yes, yes, yes, I do.

There are some people for whom a short word is always better than a long one. A short sentence and a brief paragraph always go better than long, winding efforts. The lovely William Zinsser is a great advocate of this school of thought. I sometimes love a long word; occasionally, I indulge in the sub-clause. There is a matter of subjective taste, here. But I do think that this simple idea gets at a deeper truth. When people begin to write, they often think that there is such a thing as the Literary Style. They believe that they must Write, with a capital W; they cannot just be a writer, they must be a Writer. They put on their metaphorical Sunday best and sit up straight and adopt a sonorous voice. In doing this, they instantly lose their own voice, their lovely idiosyncrasies, their distinct sound. To your own self be true, my darlings. There is no Literary style; there is only your style.

On this theme: a short, clean, everyday word is often better than a longer, pretentious word. House is always better than residence. Car is always better than vehicle. Me is always, always, always better than myself.

Never forget the power of the plain, declarative sentence.

It is obvious, and sometimes tiring, and occasionally maddening, but: practice, practice, practice. You cannot play a sonata unless you do your scales every day. Good writing does not fall like magic on the chosen few. It is the product of work and thought.

Remember the Buddhist idea of being in the moment. It is a hard but good idea for life, and it is a brilliant tool for writing. Stop thinking about what happened yesterday, or what you must do tomorrow; still your mind, and concentrate on the instant. Be present.

 

For what I did on this day last year, follow the link here. You will see that it was quite different from what I ended up talking about today. I rather love that this year's class took on a life quite of its own, deviating wildly from what I had planned. Plans are made to be broken.

 

Today's pictures are from the garden, taken last night at about nine o'clock:

My lovely old-fashioned tea rose has suddenly burst into flower. I swear that was not there the day before. I actually exclaimed out loud when I saw it, as if someone had sent me a present.

The first of the nepeta is just coming into bloom.

The astilbe is putting on its pomp.

My newest geranium is slightly out of focus, but rather delightful for all that.

And over it all was a deep, singing sky, traced with blue clouds.

PS. Thank you so much for all your enchanting comments of the last two days. Forgive me for not replying to them individually; this writing class takes enormous reserves of energy and when I come home I find it is all I can do to write the blog and prepare tomorrow's lesson.

Writing, Day One

Posted by Tania Kindersley

This is the week I give my annual writing workshop at my local arts festival. Last year, in a bit of a blog experiment, I put up edited versions of each day's lesson so that my readers could follow along. I think that the posts were rather too discursive, and also not madly well written, because I was typing them up when I came back in, and by that stage my mind had gone all to pot.

This year, I am just going to put up a few of the most pertinent things that I talked about, in case they might be of interest. That way, I shall not make hideous demands on your precious time.

This is a skeleton version of what I said today:

Good writing is hard. If you do not find it difficult, you are not doing it right.

Write the book you most want to read.

The single most fatal thing that will stop you writing is fear. The Fear takes many forms. It may be fear of failure, fear of ridicule, the fear that you do not have the right stuff. You may be terrified that people will laugh and point. But what is the worst that can happen? You may not succeed; people may indeed laugh and point. Sod them if they can't take a joke. It is not death or destitution. If you do not risk falling flat on your face, or chance the criticism of strangers, you will never know what you might have achieved. Sit down at your desk, tell the carping voices in your head to bugger off, and write, in joyful defiance of all the forces, real and imagined, arrayed against you.

There is no secret handshake. You do not need to have been born into a literary household, or have gone to a grand university, or to live like F Scott Fitzgerald. A writer is someone who writes. All you have to do is put one word in front of another. (Admittedly, this is not always as simple as it sounds.)

Try and write every day. I know that there are twenty-seven other demands on your time. I know that it is often not easy to carve out a space to write. Even if you can only manage five minutes, you can say: I wrote today. Miracles can happen in five minutes. If you make writing a habit, it ceases to be an exotic, distant ambition, allowed only to the chosen few, and instead runs alongside you like a faithful hound.

Give yourself permission to do a really rotten first draft. Even the greatest writers will do baggy, incoherent, plain bad first drafts.  The secret of good writers is that they then go back and do second and third and fourth and fifth drafts, so no evidence is left of the initial shocker. Show it to no one, not even the person you love the most. Especially not the person you love the most.

Carry a notebook with you wherever you go. Those brilliant, coruscating, immortal thoughts that fly into your head will disappear into the ether if you do not write them down.

Trust your own voice.

On a bad day, a little Mozart at full blast can really help.

Resist the temptation to talk your story away. You may long to tell someone of your fascinating idea, or your quirky characters, or your ripping plot. Keep it a secret. This is not because someone might steal your perfect notion, but because once the thing is spoken, it is out there, and the impetus to write it may be lost. Hold it close to your heart until it is done.

The work involved in writing does not just consist of putting words on a page, or typing them into a computer. The gazing out of the window is also part of the graft, even though it may not look like it, to the untrained eye. My friend The Man of Letters likes to remind me that he is working even when he is in the bath, or shopping in the supermarket. Think, think, think of your work in progress every moment you can. When I am in the thick of a book, it is the first thing I think of when I wake in the morning, and the last thing I contemplate before I go to sleep at night.

Try, if you can, to get a routine going. Be ruthless. Shut the door and turn off the telephone. People can wait.

Even though it is hard, and it should be, remember that it is also the thing you love. It can be fun. Allow yourself to be playful. Sometimes you can just throw words up in the air and see where they fall.

Know your strengths, and play to them. Be aware of your weaknesses, and do not fear them.

 

Hmm. Turns out that was not quite as skeletal as I had hoped. Even when I attempt to be pithy, I cannot resist the temptation to bang on. I do apologise. Still, I hope that this may prove of some utility.

If you would like to read last year's full version, click here.

Today's pictures are of foxgloves and ferns:

The 4th of July

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

To all my heavenly American readers:

                 HAPPY 4TH OF JULY

May I say

Thank you, America,

For:

Dorothy Parker, Charlie Parker, and all those great people called Parker.

Thank you for Fred Astaire, and Ava Gardner, and Gregory Peck, and Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall.

Thank you for Ernest Hemingway, and F Scott Fitzgerald, and TS Eliot, and Henry James, and Willa Cather, and Harper Lee, and Robert Lowell, and William Maxwell, and Jack Kerouac, and James Baldwin.

Thank you for jazz.

Thank you for Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, and Bob Dylan, and Otis Redding, and Frank Sinatra.

Thank you for the Chrysler building and the redwood tree and the bar of The Carlyle.

Thank you for separation of church and state, and the people who walked across the bridge at Selma, and the craziest, most fascinating politics in the world.

Thank you for Lee Miller and Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange.

Thank you for Peter Arno and HL Mencken and the early years of Woody Allen.

Thank you for potato chips, or, as we like to call them in Blighty, crisps.

Thank you for the postcard, and the paper clip.

Thank you for doing interesting and sometimes irreverent things with the English language.

Sadly, I cannot thank you for baseball, since it is a vastly inferior game to cricket. (Oh, oh, stop throwing things at me.)

Today is also a banner day because it is my older niece's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, lovely Tara.

My mother gave her this amazingly elegant present:

We had a little birthday drink and talked of string theory and the best way to scarify a lawn. Usual sort of subjects.

Then I got very excited because I found the first, tiny chanterelles:

Not ready to pick yet, but soon, soon.

Also, some astonishingly delightfully mossiness, which always lifts my heart:

And some really wild, pop-art tree bark:

There was balmy sun this morning, and a high wind, but now the sky has gone black and a monsoon rain has come on, quite without warning. It is like being in a Somerset Maugham short story. I am going to sit quietly and watch it.

Happy Independence Day.

Saturday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Today was a very simple day.

I woke up, and found the sky looking like this:

I went to the shop and bought some lemons and some chicken.

I thought about writing. My annual writing workshop starts on Monday, and I suddenly realised that last year I said almost nothing about Point of View. What can I have been thinking? I made some notes to correct the omission.

I listened to Jonathan Ross, who was funny.

I rather madly made sashimi for lunch. I know that there is a high art in sashimi, and you have to go to special sashimi school for seven years to learn how to cut it right, so obviously this was more just raw tuna with wasabi and soy sauce. But still. This is Aberdeenshire, not Soho. I felt stupidly pleased with myself.

I also made some cold avocado soup, because sometimes all I want is cold avocado soup.

I read a stupid article about misogyny by Piers Paul Read, whom everyone says is a good writer. I wondered if he was having a laugh or doing a spoof. I almost became enraged, but then I decided to put off the rage until later in the week.

I watered my new apple trees.

I thought that I must read more books. My reading habits lately have grown slapdash. I blame the internet; there is so much to read there.

I gazed again at my pots:

My niece and her gentleman dropped by, on their way back from the sea. They had been all the way to Findhorn. We threw sticks for the dogs and talked of inconsequential things and laughed a lot. I made them look at my roses:

And my lavenders:

I grew excited because the marjoram is about to flower:

I cooked the chicken, with marjoram and sage and sea salt and olive oil.

Quite soon, I shall get it out of the oven and eat it.

(I sometimes wonder why I tell you all this. I rather love it that I can.)

I feel calm and still, better than I have for a while.

I hope you are having an enchanting Saturday, wherever you are.

Turns out I do have something to say, after all

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Brain still addled, so forgive me if this does not come out right.

I was just reading about the Civil Partnerships Bill passing in Ireland. For a country that only legalised divorce thirteen years ago, this is a huge step forward. I remember when civil partnerships came into law here; it felt like such a banner day. There were so many things that were good about it, most of all that the legislation was greeted almost universally with pleasure. I think some people feared that there might be an outbreak of mad homophobic shouting. In fact, there seemed to be more an underlying feeling of: why did you take so long?

It also fed into the early New Labour narrative of a different, kinder, more shiny Britain. When things started getting sticky, and the government I voted for began doing confusing and upsetting things, I kept thinking, over and over: peace in Northern Ireland, civil partnerships.

It is important not to take anything away from those great leaps. After all, America, the biggest, butchest, most First World nation of all, still does not have civil partnerships, although, confusingly, gay couples can get married in Vermont and New Hampshire. However, at a national level, same sex marriage is forbidden by the bizarrely named and oxymoronic (and just plain moronic) Defence of Marriage Act. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, which is one of the many reasons I still insist he gives liberals a bad name. (That, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and a twenty-one year old intern on her knees, but that really is another story.) I keep thinking and thinking, and I know I'm a big mess of stupid today, but I do not understand how banning marriage defends marriage. Surely the more people want to say I do, the happier and merrier and better.

BUT, and this but is getting bigger all the time, for all the goodness of civil unions, why can't we just have gay marriage and be done with it? Why, why, why? It starts to feel more and more as if The Gays are being thrown a sop. There you are, slightly inferior people, you can have 'marriage-like benefits', but don't think you can have the church and the dress and the official recognition of the state. See this big old sign that says Heteros Only? Just mark it, and be on your way.

I mean really. What would happen? Would all the heterosexual couples suddenly say: Oh my, The Gays are doing it, so now we won't? That is so illogical it makes my ears bleed. The only conclusion one can draw is that those defence of marriage people just don't like homosexuality, and want to punish it by not allowing it to join their club.

So why not throw open the doors and let the bells peal out? They've done it in Sweden and Belgium and Iceland and civilisation does not appear to have come to an end there. Happiness is not a zero sum game.

(Photograph by the AP.)

(Photograph by unknown; via Jezebel.)

Look at the delight on those faces. Why would anyone want to legislate against joy?

If you are craving more on this -  and why would you not? - there is a fabulous article from the AP here. It contains possibly the best line ever in a news piece: 'Scandinavia has had a long tradition of tolerance — and cross-dressing lawmakers and gay bishops have become part of the landscape.' I love the idea of those tranny lawmakers and gay bishops adorning the hills and fjords. Apparently, in Sweden, there is a parliamentarian called Frederick Federley who is also a drag queen called Ursula. Imagine how diverting that would be in the Palace of Westminster.

Stopping now. I have to go and put myself through the torture of watching Andy Murray try to beat scary Mr Nadal. I hope it will not be an exercise in British masochism. Go on, Andy.

A coo's a coo, for all that

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

And you thought yesterday was random.

Today I am feeling so preposterously goofy that all I can offer you is a picture of some cows:

Of course, these are not just any old cows, but super special Scottish coos. Look at them, with their glorious horizontal ears.

What happens is that one cow sees me and the dogs walking past, decides we are an object of enduring fascination, and approaches the fence to take a look. Then all the other cows get hysterically excited and charge over to see what is going on.  Look at the one at the back, desperate to get in on the act.

Having roared over, they then all skid to a halt, and there follows a lot of snuffling and stamping of hooves and general heavy breathing, as they wonder what happens next. I always want to go over and scratch them on the nose, but the moment I get within a foot of them, they all walk abruptly backwards, in unison, as if they had been trained at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

Instead of nose-scratching, I decide it would be amusing to make one of the dogs pose with a long line of cows in the background. She does not think this is a good idea at all, presumably on account of the noisy group snuffling which is going on behind her. Look at her face: please, please can I get down now? The other dog, who thinks she is the Duchess of Devonshire in canine form, will have nothing to do with such a demeaning exercise.

Is it over now? Please say it is.

The dear old bovine ladies watch the dogs tear off down the avenue.

While I take one more parting shot. You can never have too many cow pictures. Actually, I can't. You probably can, and have, by now. I really do apologise. What I put you all through.

Here's a nice shot of this summer's honeysuckle fiesta, to take your mind off it.

With any luck, by tomorrow my cerebellum will have returned to some kind of higher function, and I can talk about something more sensible.

Happy Friday.

Randomness, redux

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Coherent thought is scattered to the four winds, so today is a return to the randomness. You were all so kind about it last time.

1. Yesterday, for a work thing, I got to talk to a blogger I admire, In Real Life. IRL, baby. I was in a state of high excitement. I fear I may have babbled. Blogging is such a paradoxically intimate medium that I start to regard the bloggers I read regularly as people I actually know. As a result, I wasted no time on small talk, but went straight to personal revelation. It was nought to sixty in seven seconds. I think I might have over-shared. I had mild angst afterwards, but it was such a pleasure to put a voice to the writing, and she could not have been kinder as I waffled on.

 

2. A few days ago, my neighbour very kindly found a gentleman to buy my battered old motor. It had over a hundred thousand miles on the clock, a suspicion of rust, and a torn skirt, due to the fact that I drove it over a large rock down by the Spey by mistake. (Even though it was a saloon, I treated it like a landrover, and thought nothing of taking it across fields and over rutted tracks.) Also, the steering wheel started to vibrate when it went over forty miles an hour. It had done me yeoman's service, but I feared no one would want it in such condition. It turned out, by a miracle, that the nice fellow from the next village north adored old cars, and knew how to fix them, so there was cash in hand and a great deal of mutual delight.

I wanted to buy my neighbour a nice bottle of vodka, his chosen drink, as a thank you, so I went down to the shop.

'What have you got that is special?' I said to the young man behind the counter.

'Is it for a lady?' he said.

'No, a man,' I said. 'But why do you ask?'

'Well,' he said. 'There is this pink vodka, specially for women.'

I paused to put my feminist hat on. The young man was smiling, proffering the ghastly bottle, with no idea what he had unleashed.

'Pink?' I said, in the manner of Lady Bracknell. 'PINK?'

'It's for the ladies,' he said, still not quite understanding.

'Oh yes,' I said. 'Because we are all biologically programmed to like pink, every last one of us. That really is the way to get my money; patronise me until my ears fall off.'

'It's called Pinky,' he said, helpfully. He was laughing now, I could not tell whether because he thought me funny, or was in an advanced state of terror.

'Do women actually fall for that?' I said.

'I think some do,' he said.

'It's a betrayal of the sisterhood,' I said, furiously.

Luckily I found some delightful Polish Bison grass vodka, in a very chic bottle, to take my mind off it.

'You've got to love the Poles,' I said.

'Yes,' said the young man. 'You do.' He seemed very relieved that I had stopped shouting.

But really: PINK vodka for the ladies. I'd like to have been present at that development meeting.

 

3. It astonishes me what a difference planting a plant makes. I put in some astrantias and roses and salvias yesterday. They looked perfectly fine in their pots, but after only one day in the actual ground they have stretched and unfurled and luxuriated. Their leaves are greener and their flowers more vivid. I have pretty good soil; lots of fat, happy worms, always a good sign. But I did not feed them, or put on compost or bone meal; I just dug them into the ground and gave them some water and now they look as if they are in the plant equivalent of a five star resort.

 

4. I am slightly alarmed that it is July. I am still secretly convinced it is actually the end of May.

 

5. Sarah went to interview a man called Carlos Acosta yesterday. I wondered why she was interviewing a footballer. It turns out he is a very famous ballet dancer, and every woman in Britain except for me knows about him, because he is the sexy sex in human form. Apparently women actually squeal when they hear his name. If they can put down their pink vodka for a moment, that is. I can't work out how embarrassed I should be that I have absolutely no idea who he is.

 

I'm afraid the pictures of the day are all canine, all the time, because there was some lovely sun yesterday, and my old ladies looked so gorgeous in it, that I cannot resist:

 

And here is a bonus shot of my favourite new flower, in honour of Miss Gertrude Stein, who said: 'a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose'. No one may ever have said a truer thing.

Did you ever see anything more perfect? I can hardly believe it is real.

Have a happy random First of July.