April 21, 2018

Short Story – Changing Times – part one

Flash Fiction & Short Stories, Fran Macilvey 0 Comments

Leaving Edinburgh under a grey sky and arriving in London for the Book Fair under the same blanket of low cloud, I was reminded of this short story I wrote some years ago.

 

Changing Times – Part One

 

Here was soft, muffled silence. Elsewhere, she knew a shining sun hung suspended in a vast, clear sky of shifting blues. She hoped faithfully to see the stars again, The Plough, Andromeda, Great Cygnus. Meanwhile, Earth waited, wrapped in grey, protective cloud beyond which playful starlight hung back out of sight with the myths. Naturally, it would clear, but we had no idea when.

Months ago all the strangeness started: large moths in July that clung on everywhere, silently filling and occupying all the spaces from the ground up, so that playful schemes for summer were overlooked: the mock fishing parties, the state-sponsored harvests, the tree planting jamborees. Since all-in-one pellets had been lab-perfected, people had not worried so much at the soil, had not forced food from it. Communal gardens wilted in the grey heat, un-watered and thoughtlessly trodden over. The earth couldn’t help being old-fashioned.

Many of the old, slow, ways were bypassed in an age when constant technological advances promised the world. There was small patience and no faith whatsoever, in the halls of our technocrats. The white coats clung ferociously to their ascendancy, but for how much longer?

As she patiently got out of bed that morning, Edith puffed a little, straightened and grimaced. The itchy blanket of small aches and pains began their accustomed jig over her joints. Must ease up on the late nights, be a good girl, she thought carelessly. Creeping downstairs in shabby gown and slippers, deliberately fond of those plodding, careful things of her youth which she understood marked her as eccentric, Edith used a fifth of her daily allowance of drinking water to make a pot of tea, partnering the nondescript china with a stained tea cozy. Though plain and small, the small brown piece was her favourite, one of the few pleasing and useful items she had inherited from her mother. The gentle roundness cradled exactly in her hand, like a warm, live thing.

There was a calm slowness in the small rituals of breakfasting. The air breathed balm through her kitchen windows. Many times she had been urged to leave the shabby, peeling house, which was very gently falling apart, sliding peacefully into decay. But Edith would have missed the sweeps of wind under the grey sky, the blowing breeze that welcomed her each morning at the kitchen window. She had remained in this house for over sixty years, had moved back in permanently after her mother had gone over to the other side in 2071, and in the midst of everyday tasks, cooking, cleaning, washing and baking, she would glance up and grin at changes outside, colours that clung on within the seeping seasons which, despite the grey, slipped innocently forward with a faith that Edith always found moving.

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April 19, 2018

Unexpected benefits – the London Book Fair 2018

Fran Macilvey, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 6 Comments

Unexpected Benefits – the London Book Fair 2018

Going to the London Book Fair 2018 over three days during the Easter holidays had some rather unexpected benefits: It was good to have a change of scene and to see flowers, their colours enlivening trees and roadsides, lightening the streets under an overcast sky. (After more snow in April, Scotland has just sprung out of hibernation in the last few days.) And after a bout of illness at home during the school holidays, I slept incredibly well in my hotel room in London, uninterrupted for hours at a time, high up on the third floor.

I finally met up with my good friend Frank Kusy, whom I have known for almost a decade since our days on Authonomy. How nice it was to meet up and chat over a meal. Thanks to Frank for making the trek into town to meet up.

I also met other friends from Authonomy – thanks to HarperCollins, the benefits of being part of Autho just seem to keep rolling – and as I was strolling the corridors of the exhibition centre at Olympia, I listened to interviews at the English PEN salon, as well as meeting and chatting with many other good folk: authors and editors, distributors and readers all willing to take a chance on meeting like-minded professionals, and watch the hive of business that is the book industry at work: to marvel at its complexity and its evolving place in the world, as it takes on and embraces new technology. I appreciate the show more with every year that passes.

It was marvellous to watch the whole unfolding of this expertise in one place, and to appreciate the organisation and attention to detail that makes it all work so smoothly. Thanks to everyone who made my trip south so enjoyable.

And thanks for reading.

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April 17, 2018

Doing things the easy way

Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 2 Comments

Doing things the easy way

 

I well remember as a young girl, frequently getting a gentle ticking off for taking short cuts, doing things the easy way. If I did, I wasn’t aware of any conscious decision to be lazy. I was probably just either tired or trying to keep up with other people.

On the other hand, I have the distinct impression that for many years, I made my life impossible: by doing subjects at University for which I had little natural aptitude, by trying – and failing – to do the things that others would do, and then giving up on all of life as simply too much like hard work… By refusing to do things I enjoyed, and tolerating mediocrity and poverty of expectation in a host of ways.

And lately, in the course of much of the last decade of life, by attempting to write, to edit and get published a whole body of work, big and small. That none of this has been easy, and I am still here and more hopeful than ever, I find immensely encouraging. It seems that the more I attempt difficult or different things, the more confident I become that attempting them is always worthwhile and that failure… Well, failure isn’t really the point.

The point is to learn, and in that process to hone down our preferences into those things we enjoy doing, and those we would much rather not. Even this is not so simple, though, is it? Because there is a whole host of tasks that are neither easy nor difficult that we have to do, but which we would probably rather not, as well as jobs that, if we attempt them, we may learn to love….

Thanks for reading.

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April 13, 2018

Ready steady travel

Fran Macilvey, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 0 Comments

Ready Steady Travel

In the course of the last two years I have travelled, both with and without my family, on over twenty-five trips, to Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, London… I have become so accustomed to travel in a relatively short time, that I have my kit down to a fine art and I know exactly how long it will take to get to the airport. (Tip: Travel is best in the early morning, when traffic and flight delays are minimal – a taxi to the airport at five am is ideal.)

There are advantages to all this: A certain welcome nonchalance when packing for a holiday, an acute awareness of when my passport needs renewed (December 2019, daughter’s passport ditto) and a familiarity with airport queues that has taught me how best to catch the flight when there are three thousand people in the passport queue and only one immigration official checking passports very slowly… So here are my top tips for trouble free travel.

~ Travel with hand-luggage only; and in the spirit of hand-luggage, keep your bags modest. Do not be tempted to pack to the max and get through the checks with fingers crossed. Budget airlines have small overhead lockers and rather unexpected attitudes to luggage that looks too obviously packed to the max.

~ Check in before you travel, and, if at all possible, obtain your return flight boarding pass as well. If you fail to do this, you may find that, arriving at the airport to check-in, you are the last to be allocated a seat on an overbooked flight. Some airlines are fairly shameless about double booking flights, so the earlier you obtain a boarding pass, the better. (You know you will have a wait, if the boarding pass you print off has no seat allocated on it.)

~ Avoid buying duty free, unless you can fit it comfortably in your hand-luggage (or you have forgotten to buy a present for the grande dame to whose reunion you are flying). There is nothing more irritating to flexible, fast travelling than a collection of plastic carriers attached to the handles of hand luggage.

~ Learn to get near the front of the queue, and to state your case clearly to harassed officials coping with returning football crowds, large conferences, etc. “Excuse me, sir, I have to catch a flight in half an hour,” is far more likely to get a positive response than simply shoving to the front of the queue and demanding that someone do something. That said, a bit of elegant elbow shoving is occasionally indispensable.

~ Look confident, and confidence will aid you. Try not to burst into tears when faced with a desperate situation. Assume that everyone is already doing their best in difficult circumstances, and your gratitude and patience will be the best gift to every situation, turning overworked airline staff into our allies.

Happy travelling!

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April 6, 2018

Going to the London Book Fair 2018

Fran Macilvey, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 4 Comments

Going to the London Book Fair 2018

I have long planned to go to the London Book Fair 2018.

I booked my accommodation for the London Book Fair 2018 in October last year, my train tickets in January, and have my rucksack packed with the basic essentials – one copy of each of my books, folders with my current works in progress and a copy of my radio play… the rest – the clothes, the details, will I hope not be too long in resolving.

The main issue I have – I will not call it a ‘problem’, though perhaps ‘opportunity’ is a tad too new age for the realities of travel – is that I have to be able to carry everything I need in my rucksack, which is not one of these tall main-frame types, more a middle-sized packers rucksack. In any case, I’m limited by weight, and by my rather precarious balance.

Also, I seem to have developed an aversion to using these moving escalators which we find everywhere in airports and conference centres and railway stations. For some unaccountable reason, they fill me with a most unhelpful fear and dread. (The alternative is usually a lift out of the way behind a corner somewhere, grossly slow and overused…) (Or never used and apparently out of order.) If I have one wish for my travels, it is that this fear of using downward travelling staircases might leave me. It becomes a nuisance.

That said, I’m fairly organised, which is a relief, since I have a lot to do – and am recovering from some vague, annoying illness – before I can actually catch my train on the 9th of April and sit back in standard class with a sigh. I really, sincerely, hope I make it, as I enjoy the London Book Fair, which has a lot for authors to get excited about, and many events that are open and participatory.

Thanks so much for reading.

 

 

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April 3, 2018

Mercury in retrograde

Fran Macilvey, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 2 Comments

Mercury in retrograde

                 Cartwheel Galaxy Makes Waves

 

Apparently, because Mercury is in retrograde at the moment – I sort of know what that means, but, in any case, since April is Angel month and my angels do a fantastic job of looking after me, I don’t worry too much about all this – I should be careful, back up my computer files, generally be a bit cautious and double check anything important, be canny and softly spoken, etc etc.

Too bad that, inevitably, life must go on in the meantime….

On Friday last week, just in time for the weekend to begin, as I was doing something I wish I hadn’t bothered to do, my computer crashed. Just like that, out of the blue and for no reason that I could see. I hadn’t pressed any buttons, closed down any applications the wrong way, or downloaded any stealth viruses, as far as I could tell… But knowing about this retrograde thing felt suddenly quite reassuring, as though the collapse of my PC might actually have been expected, and an extra reason – if one were needed – not to do too much, too fast.

I’m having to learn to delegate, AKA trust other people to do their jobs. If I have any lesson to learn this month, it is about the delights of delegation, since, if I am to have time to write, and to rest and laugh and eat and sleep without nightmares, I simply have to ask, and let go. There is  no other way to manage the plethora of expectations that otherwise crowd around me.

A useful lesson in this retrograde, full-moon season of Easter, is that, once I have done my best, I have no choice but to trust and let go of all expectation, except, naturally, the best one – the most peaceful one – I can muster.

Thanks for reading.

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March 30, 2018

The Easter holidays

Fran Macilvey, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 2 Comments

The Easter Holidays

Easter is upon us, and so I shall be taking a short break over the Easter holidays.

I shall be glad to have a good reason to rest, and to take time to be with family, to reconnect with the notion of family and joint enterprises… This working alone and from home is a bit too solo, sometimes, for my liking.

As I may have said previously, my mother has bought a property near us, so we shall be checking it out, and buying a few bits of home stuff so that Mum can move in soon, when she would like to. Husband and daughter prove immensely supportive in this new and rather unexpected undertaking, and I am immensely reassured to have their input and good ideas. It might even turn out to be fun, now, to have a family project in which we can all share: the jobs, the keeping tidy, the other place to go…

I don’t have much of a passion for property, but my mother is from a different generation, whose parents lived through the great depression and saw their hard-earned savings vanish overnight, so it makes sense, from my mother’s point of view, to have a place to stay, and some security in bricks and mortar.

And it gives me something else to learn from, to become better at and to understand. So I’m grateful for this chance.

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March 28, 2018

Reading Agatha Christie

Books I Have Reviewed, Fran Macilvey, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 4 Comments

Reading Agatha Christie

My mother has, at one time in her life, had every Agatha Christie book. Perhaps, like me, she feels that reading Agatha Christie is a good bet: not especially demanding, intriguing and an interesting insight into a way of life – house parties, butlers, and maids who lived up the back stair – which has disappeared from all but the most privileged households. (And recently watching episodes of ‘The Crown’, I’m not even sure I would ever want to be part of that kind of privilege.)

AC’s books also offer intriguing insights into the moral standards of the time, for example, that it was shameful for a woman of a certain class to work, to earn her way by serving others behind the counter, or in a dress shop. No young lady worth her salt would stoop to anything too grubby – she would certainly not serve as a waitress in a Lyon’s tea house – but even helping others to choose dresses was considered rather shameful. (Coincidentally, understanding this kind of social nuance also helps me to grasp why Jane Fairfax, in ‘Emma’ is so utterly appalled at the prospect of working as a governess…) How times have changed.

Social mores apart, Christie’s books are also intriguing because of the way the plots are set up, the old device of having a fixed number of characters, all congregated in the same place. “And Then There Were None” (I regret to say, my daughter’s favourite AC book) gives one of the most contrived examples of this; so contrived that I have great difficulty admiring anything else that might be considered ingenious about this particular story. If some old bam-pot wrote anonymously to me, I’d hardly be likely to turn up chez lui… but then, perhaps we are also expected to suspend our sense of reality, when reading mystery stories.

Except that, for me, one of the most compelling elements of thriller writing is realism – or at least, an integrated reality, however fanciful its premises might be.

Since Mum has left her home in France and come to live in Scotland, I am sent regular packages with AC books in them. I am reliably informed that, “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” is considered her masterpiece, so I’m saving that for last. I’ll let you know what I think of it, when I finally read it.

 

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March 26, 2018

Reasons to exercise

Fran Macilvey, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 0 Comments

Reasons to exercise

Speaking as a total amateur who used to be averse to most exercise – because it felt too much like compulsion – here are ten great reasons to exercise. Walking, cycling, swimming, dancing, ski-ing, fencing, basketball. Any would do.

Why ten? I guess if I can think of ten great reasons, then I have no excuses at all for being lazy.

~ The idea of going swimming helps me to get up early in the morning and spend happy time with my husband and daughter at the breakfast table. Result!

~ If I swim most days, I don’t have to spend too long at the pool, and can be home within the hour.

~ I feel great after a swim.

~ If the rest of the day is busy, having had a swim keeps me calm.

~ If the rest of the day is rubbish, I can always feel a sense of achievement, because I’ve managed to exercise.

~ Planning to swim every day makes me very organised, so I spend evenings tidying up the house instead of slouched uncomfortably in front of the tv. Which gives me a quicker start the next day.

~ I meet wonderful people at the pool, and am reminded, again, that we are all different, with varying preferences.

~ My brain speeds up, as does my typing, because I am relaxed and more focussed after a swim. I waste less time in other tasks, too.

~ My mood improves if I swim every day, as does my diet. (That’s really two reasons, but I wanted to include both and stay within the ten.)

~ I learn to prioritise more cleanly, and to do what I choose for more of the time, so that when I ‘have to’ cook tea or wash clothes, I spend less time worrying about it. (AKA ‘Just bloody do it!’)

That’s a great ten, almost eleven reasons to exercise, and no-where have I had to say, “It’s good for me”, the kind of reason that is, at least in this household, a bit of a guilt-trip turn off.

Thanks for reading!

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March 23, 2018

Its up to me

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 4 Comments

Its up to me

My determination surfaces when I least expect it, and its up to me to make the most of that.

When the phone rings with bad news, when there is too much spam in my IN box, when I haven’t the time to listen, even when my mother buys herself a flat next door, I now find myself ever so determined to do the right thing: to be patient, to take the time to slow down, to answer in the affirmative, “Yes, I can help.” Because, its up to me.

I don’t really see any virtue in complaining. We do that very easily, and we also expect other people – garbage collectors, teachers, tradesmen, politicians – to pick up our mess and sort us out, and give us answers.

But how about we make up our own answers, design our own futures? Rather than complaining, this is what I have decided to do.

  • Be cheerful, when it would be easier to complain.
  • Answer YES or NO clearly, when someone asks for my help, then get on and do whatever needs doing.
  • At the same time, I can focus my happiness, and accept that whatever comes along is intended to help me with that.
  • Ask for help, when I need it and learn to delegate.

We design our lives imperceptibly, with every sign of assent or disagreement. So, when I agree or decide to differ, I try to do that deliberately, as the outcome of my own positive choice, and not because I feel burdened or beholden to anyone.

I’ve had more than enough of living life by default. Yesterday, I decided that I hate muesli – or, at least, the type of worthy muesli I usually consume – and that forty years of eating that for breakfast was long enough. I much prefer porridge, as it happens.

I feel a bit like Julia Roberts, in ‘The Runaway Bride’ who could never make up her mind what she wanted; but at least, I now know that it’s time to choose. And this is the kind of responsibility I truly welcome.

Thanks for reading (and with apologies for the grammar nits. SEO is a hard task master.)

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