I write THE END and hobble away from ‘Big Bertha’ (my Apple computer) in my little attic room with a view over the rooftops to the sea. I stagger downstairs, still bent from months peering at a screen. The first thing I see is my new happy vase full of flowers. It makes me smile as I rejoin the real world, which is surprisingly still turning.
Bank Holiday Monday could not have been wetter or more depressing. All the more wonderful to wake to sunshine.
Before I started my working day I headed out for a blow on the prom. Swimmers were scurrying to Battery Rocks. Small fishing boats headed out to sea.
The morning was still and autumnal and sunlight shimmered in a wide ark across the sea. The sun held such warmth I decided to work outside in my garden.
In the afternoon I disappeared to the walled garden at Trewidden and used it as my office to get away from the sound of houses nearby being renovated.
I completed the chapter that had been exercising me and I have, at the end of this day, a rare sense of well-being. I have had a happy day as well as a good, satisfying working one. Not much more to ask for.
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I spoke at the wonderful and comforting Morrab Library about my time in Pakistan. It was great to see so many people and to find them interested in my next book.
Two highlights stand out for me. Sarah Winman in conversation with Patrick Gale- on Thursday at The Acorn Theatre talking about her book.’When God Was A Rabbit.’ A book I loved.
Jane Johnson at The Morrab Library on Saturday talking about her latest book “The Sultan’s Wife’ and her two lives in Morocco and Mousehole. Her knowledge and research for her book was fascinating. I cannot wait to read it.
This was my first Penzance Lit/Fest and it was fun and stimulating. We writers hide away so much of the year it is fun to come out and listen and gossip with each other.
Jane and me posing in The Morrab Library together
There has been a host of different faces wandering through Morrab Gardens and Penlee Park on their way to different venues to listen or to talk at Penzance’s third Literary Festival this week.
The weather was lovely and everybody in the mood to have a good time. Patrick Gale, Patron of the Festival, kicked off proceedings at The Acorn Theatre on Wednesday reading from his latest book ‘A Perfectly Good Man.’
I spoke at the wonderful and comforting Morrab Library about my time in Pakistan. It was great to see so many people and to find them interested in my next book.
Two highlights stand out for me. Sarah Winman in conversation with Patrick Gale- on Thursday at The Acorn Theatre talking about her book.’When God Was A Rabbit.’ A book I loved.
Jane Johnson at The Morrab Library on Saturday talking about her latest book “The Sultan’s Wife’ and her two lives in Morocco and Mousehole. Her knowledge and research for her book was fascinating. I cannot wait to read it.
This was my first Penzance Lit/Fest and it was fun and stimulating. We writers hide away so much of the year it is fun to come out and listen and gossip with each other.
Jane and me posing in The Morrab Library together
The parades and processions were spectacular, the music loud and fun, I thought the Mid Argyll Pipe Band were great. The stalls this year seemed more diverse and interesting. The Thai food stalls and crepe stalls were doing a roaring trade. The weather held until late afternoon but a good time was had by all.
We got up early to watch the Olympic Flame pass along Penzance Promenade. I was surprised at how many people were already lined up each side of the road. The feeling was carnival and the good natured gossip increased as we all waited in sunshine and a stiff wind. All cynicism seemed to have been put aside for a once in a lifetime chance to see the flame practically pass our doorsteps. Police presence was huge and as the outriders and all the accompanying entourage came into view heralding the torch bearer the excitement rippled and grew.
Sometimes I think we are so busy snapping the moment we are in danger of missing it, but here are my not very good photographs of the moment. I firmly believe that Cornwall started the good will and had a ripple effect on all the crowds gathered to watch the torch bearers down the line.
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London in a heatwave
Last week I had a wonderful, flying visit to London combining work and pleasure. My visit coincided with a heatwave. Sitting in the late afternoon by the Serpentine drinking cold white wine it felt like blissful midsummer.
The last few years have been eventful ones. At the end of 2009 I flew out to Pakistan to visit my partner who was working in Karachi. As I flew over Afghanistan and looked down at the barren, ochre mountains that seemed to house no life I felt a strange excitement, an intimation that my life was going to change. My partner was waiting for me with airport security as the plane doors opened and I was whirled away through the airport and into a waiting car. The heat hit me like a blast from an oven as we drove into Karachi amidst the terrifying traffic, bright buses, huge decorated lorries and motorbikes weaving through the chaos with up to five people on them.
An hour or so later, ensconced by the hotel pool where we had an apartment and where the welcome had been overwhelming, I looked up at a vivid blue sky where kites whirled low, at the small silver-grey doves pecking at the edges of the pool underneath hibiscus and rustling palms and realised with a shock this was love at first sight for a country I did not know and whose culture was so different from my own. I was not prepared to fall in love with Pakistan but that is what happened. I went for two weeks and stayed for a year.
I wrote my latest book, THE DAY THE RIVER CAUGHT FIRE by a deserted swimming pool in Karachi.
I made some wonderful friends in Pakistan and I saw some wonderful places. However it was not always easy. Karachi is a dangerous city and my movements were severely restricted. I could never go out alone, only with our driver Noor, or with Pakistani friends. It was sometimes like being in a five star prison.
What it did give me as a writer was a unique opportunity to observe, to absorb and to listen to all the disparate lives going on in a hotel in Karachi. Journalists, diplomats, NGOs, businessmen of all nationalities passed through. The hotel staff talked to me of their lives and their dreams that were almost surely not destined to be fulfilled.
I sat by the pool in the early mornings before the heat of the day and I wrote until the heat drove me in. In the late afternoons I read Pakistani writers who opened up their world for me. I swapped books with an American diplomat and swam in an empty pool in an often empty garden.
My book is my thanks and my tribute to the Pakistan I saw.
I saw grace and beauty and a dignity in people who have so little and are confronted with violence and danger every day.
I rediscovered the meaning of true friendship. Overwhelming kindness when I was ill or lonely or a little frightened. We are your family while you are here.
Pride and deep love for family life predominates. Happiness in the small simple things such as shopping and eating together no matter what happens tomorrow; the importance of the moment and the preciousness of each other.
The dark side of Pakistan, when we were abruptly no longer safe drove us home early. We cried. Our friends cried. It felt like losing my Karachi family. Emails and Face Book mean we stay close and one day I hope I will return to Pakistan.
Back home in Cornwall I moved to a lovely three-storey house at the west end of town. I have an office at the top of the house where I can see the sea glittering through the rooftops. The landscape, living by the sea, is the rhythm and inspiration for much of my writing. Even if I am writing of another place, the background, the innate sense of where I live remains important.
In the first month of 2012 I look back on the last two years in the photos, the people and the landscape that inspired my latest two books.