blurb 28 November 2008
For those of you who’d like to know more about the new novel just click on the logo at the top of the site and you’ll learn more about MISSING YOU ALREADY.
Also, for those of you who’d like to come to the play OCTOBER in February (I can see some top japes using the inherent confusion in that phrase coming my way shortly) tickets are on sale now and if you go in person into the Olympia theatre box office on Dame Street I think you can buy them without having to pay commission to an intermediary…could be the price of the bus fare into town on the night saved there: prudent in these straitened, creditcrunchy times…
No niff yet from the fibreglass – methinks it has not happened as per schedule…hmmm
fibreglass 27 November 2008
The fibreglass work didn’t start today so that noxious smell is all ahead of me and the G. I am SO cheesed off wanting the build to end now – and i VERY much doubt it’ll all be done by Christmas (quite QUITE bad tempered about it now, as is Herself)
Am thinking of expanding a short story I wrote for a charity collection (that never happened) to make it into a kids’ book (age 7 – 11, say) about a cat, funnily enough…though not the G – oh no, not her at all at all (can you imagine if she set her lawyers on me? they’d rip me apart before breakfast – she has GOOD people)
useless 26 November 2008
I am becoming increasingly useless as time goes on – this is something that is perhaps to be expected as this old gal ages. However, it’s reached all time highs recently. I am failing to join up ideas in spectacular ways now and only ever realise what I should have done in any given situation just as it’s on the cusp of being too late which still has that tantalising margin of ‘I nearly made it but didn’t’ attached – case in point: I was in London for 2 days and had hoped to go to the Belorussian Embassy to apply for visas but Rich’s new passport isn’t ready so that didn’t happen BUT what I neglected to work out before I left again was that I could have gone and collected the forms for same as doubtless these will need to be signed by both of us and we won;t both be going to the Embassy to get the effin things…DUH!
At tonight’s Russian lesson, via Skype, I couldn’t pronounce the letter L properly – it can change a little depending on its circumstance in a word but honestly I’d‘ve thought I had a few variations on that theme in me…no, apparently. Disaster.
And I just KNOW there’s something else relevant to all of this that I had to tell ye but guess what? GONE! it’s disappeared into the mush that is now resident in my head.
Unless there’s worm up there…or a little alien has taken over…or the cat has been stealing my thoughts as I sleep*…
(*again)
worm 26 November 2008
I have had a week of squirmy stuff – mostly just thoughts BUT there have been some dreams that were a little too real for words. Mostly the dreams were stuff that could have happened to me in my waking hours so I resent them greatly for having a presence in my sleep too – example: tales of builders doing all sorts and, later in the dream, me running through airports having not quite made my plane/flight. Last night’s doozy was one where I sat on the hugest plane ever and it was like a bad hairdressers but I had left a coat and hat beyond check-in and HAD to get them before take-off and still maybe score a good seat on the plane (which was quite frankly a school hall…) Anyhow, marry to all this to a sight from a website that I saw tonight – an operation on a woman’s brain where the doctors were expecting a tumour and instead found a LIVE WORM and the message from everyone, including the woman, is WASH YOUR HANDS – I am off to do just that now…
motivation 24 November 2008
Can’t get motivated about much at the moment. And anything I do actually want to do is dependent on other people having pulled their weight first. It’s both very frustrating and really quite wonderful. Though I will admit to being just a little bored now. I think I need to get back to reading books properly. I’ve got out of the habit since the COSTAs judging was dealt with – as you all know I read a LOT of books then. But I find it very difficult to concentrate when the hosue (in Dublin) is full of builders – I feel a bit in the way to be honest, and I probably am too! On Sunday I did a little extra scene in Ramsgate for THE CALLING, the movie that I play a nun in (also Brenda Blethyn, Susannah York, Rita Tushingham and Corin Redgrave, though the latter ain’t a nun in it). It was wonderful to get back onto a film set and I really got the urge to be acting a bit more regularly at the moment – but it’s a strange time of year and unless you’re in a Christmas show or Panto there’s not a LOT happening. And I don’t much like having to work solidly over the holiday period so I’d best shut up on that before I start to sound like I’m whinging (I’m not, I promise). I thought that I’d tie in the reshoot with a trip to the Belorussian Embassy in London (there isn’t one in Ireland) to get our visas for a proposed visit to Minsk over the New Year BUT I hadn’t reckoned with Richard needing a new passport. So I’m in London a little purposeless as a result. I knocked about the shops today to see what was cheap and cheerful as pressies for the festives and that was a bit depressing and it seemed just a tad early (for me) to be making such decisions. So I came home, did a little Russian homework, watched our very fuzzily-receptioned tv and have decided to give up on the day. I should have gone out to the cinema but that’s has only just this minute occurred to me – DUH! – here I am, in one of the greatest cities on earth, and that didn’t cross my mind till now – I am LOSING it I tells yez…
virus 23 November 2008
I am not a hypochondriac. Lately, as you all know, I brought the G to the vet with sneezing and a slight cough and the result is that she has a dust allergy, but for myself it was a top over the counter antihistamine. I am slightly asthmatic, but I have inhalers for that and really resent having to go twice a year to get prescriptions for those when I really don’t need to, at least not that often. In other words, I have to be actually sick before I will bother anyone. But there are some things which, even if I do get, will have be rampant before I give in and admit that I have them and need help, which will also, by that time, be a little late for interventional help. Those things include SARS (remember that?) and Bird Flu. They turned out to be damp enough squibs in terms of pandemics (still don’t want them, by the by). And although each year there is a flu vaccine I get free (if I remember to go get it – usually while getting the asthmatic inhaler prescription I feel I shouldn’t have to go for so I make the doctor’s visit count) I don’t have it as a huge priority. However, I wrote a book with a character who has Alzheimer’s, MISSING YOU ALREADY, which you’ll all see in shops from January 8th, and I am convinced I have a little of that as a result. In other words, I am susceptible. So I should not watch dramas on the tv about the whole world dying of the flu, barring a handful of survivors, like the one screened tonight by the BBC – already I HAVE IT.
spiders 22 November 2008
I’m not great with spiders. I can tolerate them in the garden and I’m okay with the TINY ones anywhere, even in the house, BUT the big lads scare the bejingoes out of me. I think it’s that they move so quickly and silently..oh, and erratically (not good). When I was growing up in Galway and got my own bedroom it was the coldest one in the house and is still known as The Fridge to this day (my Mum now has the dubious pleasure of sleeping in it). Anyhow, the Fridge had a vent to the outside world and every so often the huge outdoor arachnids would wander in. Whatever about seeing them on the ceiling and not being able to sleep knowing they were there, to pull back the covers and discover one having a snooze between the sheets was an all out nightmare for me. The house in Dublin, where I now live (well, most of the time) was built in the 1860s and has plenty of wall cavities and the like for the big lads (who I am convinced are hairy and some really do have eyes out on stalks) and they saunter in and around the living areas late in the year, much to my considerable chagrin. We have a lot of wooden floors and these yokes are that big that I am convinced I can hear them making noise as they run about. I read somewhere these are the males looking for the females. As much as I have a bit of a phobia about spiders, though, I would never kill one (it’d take a club or cricket bat for some of the specimens round our way anyhow and I’d fear a charge of murder). If there’s a spider in the bath or sink (they really do seem to favour these spots – or are they just stupid and fall into them and can’t get out again?) I trap it in a glass and throw it outside. The tiny little chaps are supposed to mean money so they’re most welcome. And now I read that spiders are in space. Yup. Some orb-weaving spiders have been brought on-board the International Space station. Apparently one pair immediately went missing and the others spent the early days making really weird webs as zero gravity evidently affects them. However, a week in, one clever lad has started to make symmetrical webs. Strange, frightening, ugly, clever, adaptable creatures (with way too many legs)
arturo ui 21 November 2008
Anyone within ANY distance of Dublin should go and see The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui at the Abbey Theatre. It is MAGNIFICENT – scary and hilarious. Central to the brilliant ensemble cast’s performance is a tour de force by the young actor Tom Vaughan Lawlor who is extraordinary as Arturo – part Charlie Chaplin, part Groucho Marx, part Adolph Hitler. Can’t recommend it enough. Don;t let the fact that it’s by Brecht have any influence on whether you plan to see it – JUST GO )you’ll thank me for it)
And for those of you within ANY distance of New York – the IRish company Rough Magic presents Improbably Frequency from Dec 4 til Jan 4 at the 59 east 59 theatre. It’s a riot of musical theatre based around the World War 2 years in Dublin, which we Irish charmingly called the Emergency, when John Betjeman was in residence and suspected to be a British spy, Irwin Schrodinger was here at the behest of the government and the city was a hotbed of all sorts of spies, drunks, IRA men and the like. It’s fantastic and hilarious and another big recommendation from Yours Truly.
Building Update – today the dust was bad AGAIN – I really do believe I will be finding it in books, nooks and crannies for YEARS to come. More smelly stuff promised for next week when that old pungent favourite fibreglass is introduced to proceedings as the base of a (small) ‘run around’ shower. Hope the Hairy Lass survives that alright as it’s fairly noxious, I think. I’m just fed up now that everything has taken so long and we hadn’t expected it to initially – we should be facing into our last week but we have 4 more to go because so much time was lost during our truly crap summer.
Permission granted for the quotes used in MISSING YOU ALREADY so it’s full steam ahead – in bookshops everywhere from January 8th. (PHEW!)
grow your own 21 November 2008
Well, I hear from Mary in the US that it takes 5 – 6 months to grow a liver so that’s good to know and puts a time frame on things. I am inclined to agree with Joyce in Scotland, though, that growing a new brain might be a priority for us all. I’m losing the noggin cells at an alarming rate and regularly have to jettison information because I need to recycle the few working bits that I have still under my control to use for new info. It didn’t help that one of the characters in my next book, MISSING YOU ALREADY, has Alzheimer’s because I know far too much about it now and am convinced I have a bit of it – more some days but that could also be put down to a tad too much wine from time to time. Anyhow, a new brain would be grand but I have the feeling it’s not as simple as just deciding to grow one – I’m going to need a clutch of scientists and a laboratory, probably, and with the length of time it’s taking to do the house up I don’t think I’ll be building anything more for quite some time. It looks like I may just have to put up with what I have, physically and mentally, for another while…
The scaffolding came off the front today and the house looks like itself again…from the outside, that is. Inside is still a mysterious mess. And, while I’m at it, I’d always heard that water gets into everything and ‘will always find a way’ – can I suggest something that would give water a run for its money? DUST! Dust gets EVERYWHERE! Dust, I tells yez, it’s the new water.
genetics 19 November 2008
I’m wondering if I should start growing my organs. I base this on the story that a woman has had a bronchial tube fitted that was made from stem cells taken from her bone marrow. What bothers me is that no time frame was given, and so I don’t know if the tube took a while to get ready, so that’s why I think it might be time to get a few things started for the inevitable decrepitude that must take its toll. To be honest I’m keen on having a lot less of myself rather than more, but it would be handy to have a range of the bits that ‘go’ first ready and waiting. I don’t think I’ll grown anything like legs or arms as I don’t want more of the same there – I want slimmer ones and that even if I used them when they were tiny like those heartstring-tugging baby vegetables in the shops I suspect they’d just continue growing and end up no better than I was.
Another great story today is about an Estonian spy who infiltrated NATO and worked away there for decades. He is now under arrest and charged with treason – it seems such an old-fashioned crime these days, doesn’t it? And an almost romantic one. I suppose I always think there’s nothing so secret that it would be dangerous or worth knowing anymore, seeing as we are supposed to live in times of relative peace in Europe at least but of course countries have security systems and I think in the case of this chap he may have passed on details of a proposed US defence shield in Europe to ‘the other side’. All very much the stuff of thrillers.
I can’t believe John Sargent has left STRICTLY COME DANCING. I had no problem with him making it through each week, as you all know, and I think his dancing would have encouraged a lot of people to have a go – there can’t be much wrong with that. I’ll miss him, for one.
The COSTA boo award short lists are out. I am a judge in the novel category along with Matthew Sweet and Dan Fenton. Our list is
The Sacred Scripture by Sebastian Barry.
A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernieres.
The Other Hand by Chris Cleave.
Trauma by Patrick McGrath.
I recommend them all, clearly. The category winner will be announced in early January and will go forward for Book of the Year which is decided on 27th January 2009.