Literary festivals and family reunions

Today is day one of the annual Ways With Words festival held here at Dartington. Many years ago (longer than either of us care to remember) it was at this festival that Marcia gave her first talk. She was then one of the unknowns – or so the organisers judged. She was booked into the smallest venue available, the tickets sold out and then Marcia was advised that she would be moved to another, bigger hall. This should have given her more confidence but it actually increased her terror.

To this day, Marcia hates speaking in public (and especially about herself) but she is so incredibly good at it that nobody who has been to one of her talks really believes that to be true but I can assure you it is.

Anyway, since that first time she has appeared at a number of other Ways With Words and at festivals as prestigious as the Oxford Literary Festival and as local as the one held at Tavistock. Each one evinces the same response.

‘Why do they want me? I’m a writer not a speaker,’ she wails. ‘Don’t they understand that it’s the books that matter. Anyway, when novelists stand on their hind legs and start talking about themselves, nine times out of ten they intrude between the reader and the books and that is always a bad thing.’

Well, this year I bought her a Rover Ticket for this festival which means she can go to everything she wants to. It was by way of a birthday present but I had to give it to her a month early (you can’t wrap a festival in pretty paper and keep it until the day). She has gone off to listen to Jonathan Miller speaking in the Great Hall which I am sure she will thoroughly enjoy. I walked over with her so that I could take some pictures. It was, would you believe, raining.

Somewhere in the middle under an umbrella is Marcia.

This year there is also an exhibition of sculpture here, small pieces some of which, as you can see, are pretty weird.

Head Above Water, Body and Soul Together
This and the two below by Tati Dennehy (stoneware ceramic)

Lie Dee Down

Ghost Dog

Woman with Mandolin by Anne-Marie Moss (French Limestone)

 On Sunday we are off to Dartmouth for a family reunion lunch. Working out who is who in the family is not one of my things but it certainly is for Hugh, the eldest son of Josephine, daughter of my mother’s elder sister. We all lived together during most of the war years and, as a result, Jo and I were very close: she is more like a sister than a cousin.

Jo, Ken and baby Hugh moved to Canada (an exchange posting for Ken who was a helicopter designer working for Bristol Aeroplane Company) and then, at the end of that contract, down into the US where Ken moved to Boeing. In time they were all granted US citizenship – Hugh’s three siblings being born there were Americans from the first yell.

Hugh is passionate about the family. He has spent many hours working out who is who and, starting tomorrow, various members will descend on Dartmouth from the US, from Canada, from Switzerland and, of course, various parts of the UK. It will be good to catch up with people I haven’t seen for a long time and to meet some for the first time. My main sadness is that Jo and her husband Ken will not be there although Jo’s brother (another Ken which has led to confusion in the past) emailed me the other day to say that he and his wife Patsy would be coming.

It will either be great fun or a terrible disaster. Let us hope it is the first.

Look at those paws!
This is a superb example of a Bernese Mountain Dog

This week, a tumble, a wumble and an apology.

Let's get the apology out of the way first. In part this is associated with the tumble but there were other inputs as well. These included a stray nephew who asked if he could come and stay for a few nights – he is an architect who practises as a Design Manager on construction projects. He had come down from York to resolve a few problems on a site in our part of the world. Thus our evenings have been taken up chatting about old times (when he and his generation were small and would stay with Marcia) and about his work. It was great fun having him to stay but our usual schedules took a hammering with the result that I did not respond to the comments on last week's blog. Sorry about that.

Shot in Totnes outside Totnes Bookshop. Author and reader, I assume.

The tumble happened on Sunday when Marcia was walking to church. There are a number of places where the kerbs are 'dropped' to road level in order to make it easier for those in wheelchairs or using Zimmer frames. Basically she tripped over the slope at the end of the dropped section and fell rather heavily. With blood pouring out of one hand, and feeling very sick, she decided to return home but one of our neighbours saw her. Bless, her, she took Marcia into her kitchen and carefully cleaned the wounds, applied anti-septic cream, bandages and a good measure of tender loving care. Then she walked up our lane with Marcia to ensure her safe arrival home. She was extremely lucky: she could so easily have broken her wrist. As it was both wrists and her right shoulder were badly bruised – still are but now in the browny-yellowy stage, the angry purples having faded.

One of the nice things about Totnes is the total disregard most people have for cars.

There was no question of her typing on Monday so we spent the day going into Totnes, where some part of the work in progress may or may not be set, and then down to Dartmouth and along the coast to Torcross, both of which are definite candidates.

Whenever we go to Dartmouth, I gravitate to the boats.
Well, I would, I suppose. I have been doing that for as long as I can remember.

The wumble was associated with the contract for Postcards from the Past and the Sea Garden with St Martin's Press in New York. This is a fairly bulky document and the obvious way to send it across the Atlantic for checking and signing is to do so electronically. For some reason, which I still do not understand, we often have problems opening these files from the US. This time, I was able to open the it in read-only mode but not in edit-mode. Thus there was no possibility of Marcia signing 'electronically' and my sending the contract back as an attachment to an email – as we do with all the European contracts. Back to snail mail but ...

An evening shot of the mouth of the River Dart taken a few weeks ago.

In the US the standard paper size is American foolscap. Here it is A4. Furthermore, SMP call for six copies – each having twenty-four pages. Apart from worrying about the destruction of the woodlands required to produce all this paper there are the costs associated with postage. Because of the difference in paper size, the way this has happened in the past is that SMP sends the contract electronically to Marcia’s agent’s agent in New York, Kathy Anderson, who prints off the required six copies and posts them to Dinah Wiener in London. Dinah then checks the contract and, if all is well, posts all copies to us. Marcia signs them and we post everything back to Kathy. All of these costs are, of course, charged to Marcia.

This is looking down over Torcross from the hill behind. The narrow strip of pebble bank that divides the fresh water "ley" (pronounced "lee") from the sea along which the road runs is clearly visible. The village is just to the right of this picture.

You can see why we want to find an easier and cheaper way. Anyway, this time we have taken a flyer. We can read the whole contract on the screen and I was able to print off six copies of those sheets that need Marcia's signature – on the wrong paper size, of course – and I have posted them off to Kathy. Will this be acceptable to SMP? I have no idea but I'll let you know next week – assuming we know then – and I will also tell you about the complications created by publishing zones.

Looking along Slapton Ley towards the village of Torcross.

By the way: if you don’t know what I mean by wumbled, it’s time to read Echoes of the Dance.

This week our blog dog is a beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog - Oscar. Now, where have I heard that names before?