Random happy day

Posted on January 7, 2015 by hilarycustancegreen

It is cold and not very inviting outside, but I am happy to walk to the Post Office with another book order from Amazon. On their UK website it mostly shows as out of stock. I have posted 14 copies to them altogether. They can have as many as they want, I just wish they’d order them in time.

Outside spring is knocking on the door. Primroses are out, snowdrops emerging and the cyclamen, planted last year and a gift from my childhood home, are already flowering.

At lunchtime we walked our Christmas tree through the village to the local zoo, where the lions are unable to resist them.

This afternoon there were loud road-drilling noises on the road in front of our house. On investigation we discovered two very cheerful men from the Council busy digging out and spot filling some of the gargantuan potholes in our road. It really needs (needed four years ago) a new surface, but anything is better than nothing. After some joking, we took them a cup of tea and biscuits.

When one of the men returned the tray, he asked if I would be interested in selling my Nissan, Sunny. Now this is a battered, venerable (L Reg, 1993-94) workhorse, that goes on passing its MOT year after year and does all the heavy mucky jobs as well as getting me to Lindy hopping and other delights. It is scratched and dented, held together with gaffer tape, and grows moss around the windows. This guy collects these cars! I had to turn him down as I plan to run it until it eventually dies (which might be after I go, at the present rate).

Tonight I have a book group meeting to discuss Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son by Roger and Charlie (the son) Mortimer.

Wishing you all a festive time

Posted on December 25, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

WE seem to have arrived at Christmas day! I am wearing so many hats I’m not sure if sleep is an option. Before I feed the reindeer, I would just like to wish you a happy, peaceful day wherever in the world you happen to be.

The Dance – living with FTD

Posted on December 21, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

This is not a Christmassy post. I could have waited until after Christmas to post a review of a book about brain degeneration, but death and disease do not wait for the right season and I need to write while the effect of the book is still strong in me.

Before I retired, I used to work in brain research and when my work took me into the field of early-onset dementias I found very little to read that was written from a relative’s point of view. Soon after this, in 2007, Marianne Rumens published her brave account of her husband’s life and death from Frontotemporal Dementia or Pick’s Disease, titled No More Apples for Tom.

Recently, Deborah G. Thelwell published a similarly brave book, The Dance: Our Journey Through Frontotemporal Degeneration. This is a love story about a long and happy marriage. It is also the story of her husband, Alan, and his devastating brain disease (FTD). Deborah is a nurse, and she writes a blindingly honest, clear and heartfelt description of living with this disease. In particular she charts her experience of FTD’s grim and erratic progress from first diagnosis to last breath. She does this with committed love, but also with clarity – a rare combination.

This disease attacks in mid-life, symptoms typically manifest in patients in their mid-fifties, when no-one is expecting brain degeneration and doctors, understandably, look for more likely explanations first. FTD results eventually in dementia, but it is extremely variable, often difficult to diagnose and poorly understood, even by health professionals.

This book is an enlightening read for every neuroscientist, doctor, nurse, researcher or student of FTD and other early-onset brain diseases. Because it details the day-to-day changes in behaviour, it shows in devastating detail the way such a disease causes pain to those in contact with it. It shows the many misunderstandings experienced by relatives and sufferers of FTD. I wish that when I was a researcher new to this area I had had this account to hand. I would have had better insight into the lives of those I was trying to understand and both their experience of my efforts and my work would have benefited greatly.

For Deborah, re-living this experience as she wrote must have been very hard. But what she has accomplished is a gift to those working in the field and I hope this knowledge will make the effort of writing all worthwhile for her and her family.

It is important to say that this is NOT a suitable book for the newly-diagnosed patient or their relatives. There are many variants of FTD and the path of this disease is itself very variable. I have personally known several patients with the same diagnosis whose lives have taken a different course from Deborah and Alan’s. Early diagnosis often changes as the disease progresses and FTD is frequently only confirmed with certainty post-mortem.

Mea culpa – red-faced publisher

Posted on December 11, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

Umm, I have a confession. All this stress over Amazon making my life as a publisher (Threadgold Press) into a nightmare and endangering sales of my new book (Border Line) may be my fault. I asked them, yet again, why they did not send an email to me about an order, and I put in the email address I expected them to use. They replied that if I wanted to use this email address I had better change my settings, because the one they had was… They had a non-existent email address, a mixture of two of my three addresses. This particular stramash is an error I have made in the past, so I’m sure it is my fault. Apologies Amazon Advantage (ouch!).

My penance is to tell you all and perhaps help one other person to avoid the same pitfall, and to check their settings when expected emails go astray. In spite of GIGANTIC embarrassment, I am happier than before, because an intractable problem has an explanation and a cure, so the problem should disappear.

All I need now is a placatory photo so that you will remember the photo and not my idiocy.

A sticky undertaking

Posted on October 23, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

[M-R look away now]

I had this great idea for my Border Line book launch, it would be an afternoon affair with tea, coffee and cakes… so simple. The only problem is that I really cannot bake cakes and I have more than sixty hungry people coming on November 8th and I do want them to feel good (and, of course, buy books). I have ordered some mini cakes from our village café (lovely but expensive), and my daughter will help. Still, I am a tad concerned. I have in the past made passable fruit cakes, and they keep, so I thought I’d start with these.

I found five suitable tins, did some maths, but stupidly did not really take in the quantities I was juggling with, and started mixing currants, raisins, sultanas, glacé cherries and candied peel prior to soaking them in brandy.Of course, I didn’t have containers built for this scale of catering, but after a sticky 20 minutes, managed to mix the fruit fairly evenly for overnight brandy-soaking. Next afternoon my task started with preparing the tins – I’m a dab hand at this, but it takes time. I’m finally about to get started when the Broadband engineer arrives. We don’t normally keep the phone and the router in the kitchen, but our main telephone socket is there and and our internet provider is insisting we use this socket until the problem (now three months old and this is the fourth engineer to visit) is sorted. I clear the table. After an hour the engineer has (Halluljah!) taken router and phone to husband’s desk.

I assemble all the other ingredients and start measuring – we’re talking twenty eggs here and 2 1/2 kilos butter never mind the flour, sugar, spices etc. [The glass of wine is merely a kitchen aid]. So I run to a neighbour to borrow some mixing bowls and decide I’d better cream the butter and sugar in two lots. My maths is suspect as I have more fruit than I will ever be able to put into the two lots of mixture. By the time I have grated five oranges, five lemons, added all the final ingredients, filled the tins and put them in the oven, it is 8 pm and we are HUNGRY. The cakes are supposed to take a minimum of four hours. I take some out at 3 hours and the others at midnight, I have a horrible fear that I have overcooked them (death to fruitcakes).In the morning they at least look the part. I shall feed them with brandy and perhaps display them temptingly, but out of reach, on the day. I now have about a kilo of brandy-soaked fruit unused and a small bowlful of uncooked fruitcake mix.

Although I enjoyed the mud-pie side of hand mixing the dried fruit, I think, on the whole, I’d better stick to writing.

A vintage car, Middlemarch and hedgehogs

Posted on October 18, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

Not having blogged for a while, this post includes a somewhat random collection of subjects. There will be short stories and more paintings again next time.

First, can anyone identify the make of this English car of the 1920s?

Next, while I blush at the years that have passed before I got around to reading Middlemarch (George Eliot), I finally accomplished this. If I had read it as a schoolgirl, I might have been a better writer, but hopefully it is never too late to have an improving influence. Eliot has a way of lightly skewering a character onto the page, with the result that they are forever real in your mind. There are no saints or villains to be seen; every character has strengths and weaknesses, can fascinate or disgust.

A few words on Mr and Mr’s Vincy’s relationship with their daughter, Rosamund, tells so much about all their characters.

Vincy, blustering as he was, had as little of his own way, as if he had been prime minister,…

Rosamund… listened in silence, and at the end gave a certain graceful turn of the neck, of which only long experience could teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy.

And Bulstrode’s endless rationalisations are a total giveaway of sanctimonious hypocrisy.

… is it not one thing to set up a new gin-palace and another to accept an investment in an old one?

The fates treat everyone with impartial kindness or cruelty according to random whim. Yet the plot is tight, intricate, totally believable and immensely satisfying. This is exactly what the title implies, a novel woven round a community, and yet this is no old-fashioned pastoral, the individual stories still grab you today. People’s mistakes and aspirations are still recognisable today. I’d better stop. Basically, Eliot has all the skills I am striving to acquire and my envy of her is too blatant.

I started Middlemarch in high summer, but autumn has more than set in. The hedgehogs are still feeding; we almost tripped over one last night, snuffling just outside the back door. He scuttled off, but returned quickly when I put food out. They will not eat in the rain, so if it is wet we put the plate under the back porch. Finally, my favourite rose, Just Joey, has decided to have a final summer fling and the cosmos chocamocha is flowering madly.

‘Those Magnificent Men…’

Posted on September 16, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

[This is a post for aeroplane nuts, feel free to pass on by.]

On Saturday we went with aeroplane enthusiast friends to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. This is an airfield, plus many great hangers, with aircraft spanning both world wars and up to today’s fighting/rescue aeroplanes. I did my best with my little camera. Here we have a Gypsy Moth.

And here is the Rapide from the 1930’s, in which people can take joy-rides from Duxford.

Rapide

The Boeing B 17 Flying Fortress Sally B being fettled before she took off.

One of the most exciting displays was the wing walkers. Here is one warming up.

And here they are in the air. One of them is piloted by David Barrell, who used to be a partner in our local garage, keeping my series of very fourth-hand cars on the road. I worry about the G force.

Here’s one (a Shorts Tucano) that sat in front of us for some time. It’s paint job made me think of your blog, Pierre, so this is for you. Though I gather that this wonderful Canadian-built (1943) Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina is more to your taste.

Catalina

She was majestic in flight and slow enough for my camera.

Catalina flying

At one point there were four Spitfires and a Hurricane in the air. Here’s just one Spitfire and below a Spit and the Hurricane – CORRECTION – 2 Spits (the second with the squarer wings is a later version).There were many, many highlights in the day, but I particularly enjoyed the WWI re-enactment using replica planes. These included the 1912 designed, Royal Aircraft Factory BE2; 2 Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a (1917 design) ; 2 Fokker DR1 (1917 design); a Sopwith Triplane (1916 design); and 2 Junkers CL1(1917 design). They appeared over the horizon, having been flown from another display in Southampton.

The show ended with an exciting display from an Avro Vulcan and two Hawker Siddeley Gnats.

There were scores more planes. They taxied up, posed in front of where we were standing, then took off. There was always one, or many, flying at any one time.

The following day, when we were not able to attend, there was a much anticipated visit from a Canadian Lancaster. This plane, Avro Lancaster B Mk X, is one of only two that are airworthy. We hoped it would fly over our house at some time in its display, but we were disappointed (though the Red Arrows flew dramatically over our heads), so here is a far better picture from the Duxford Air Show catalogue.

And that’s it folks. We had a wonderful and very noisy time. I’ve probably misnamed an aeroplane here or there, so feel free to tell me. And if that seems like a lot of bad photos of aeroplanes, there are another 300 odd…

I did sneak off during the show to revisit the Burma War gallery, where there was a small exhibition of relics from Far East POWs, including some paintings of the POWs at work by Jack Chalker and others. I will return to the POW story – probably after Christmas.

A tiny extra – LeVier Cosmic Wind, Ballerina. One of the original three built in 1947.

Self-publishing progress?

Posted on August 25, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

Another week of mayhem and progress – of sorts. Having made my proof-readers’ lives hell by pressing them to complete as much as possible against the clock (with the rather minimal bribe of runner beans) I entered all their brilliant catches into my final file in InDesign and… pressed the button to send the text to the printer.

I then got my head round the file requirements of the cover picture, recreated the file with the correct dimensions (then correcting that when I found I had misunderstood) and sent it for checking to a great designer (whose time I can only afford by the minute).

On Saturday I received an email:

Apologies for the s – l – o – w announcement of a competition winner, but the announcement (and my reasoning) can be found here:
http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/win-a-free-cover-design/#comment-101835
Well done, Hilary. Commiserations everyone else. [there were all of 6 entrants]

Umm… although I have reservations about my cover (because it has no figure in it), I have grown fond of the beautiful image my daughter put together and I want it to go to the printers as soon as possible. (NB you are never sufficiently ahead of the game in publishing), so I felt I had to turn down this opportunity – something I would have lain in the mud for a few weeks ago. However, we have a compromise. I will now have a design by Bronze Design for my eBook version of Border Line.

CORRECTION: I now have bronze level design by 99Designs for my eBook version of Border Line.

I have also been in touch with the travel company, Just Slovenia, who, way back in 2009, helped me set up an itinerary to research many of the places that feature in Border Line. They responded and I have now sent them a PDF of the novel.

I’m not accustomed to so much progress up the ladder, I’d better get ready for another snake.

Lindy Hopping and the Marx Brothers

Posted on August 1, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

[I may have put in too many video clips, just take a dip or two]

Important questions first. What is Lindy Hopping? It is basically Swing Dancing, it started in America in the 1920s and gathered pace with many variations through the next twenty years. To see the genuine article watch this clip from the Marx Brothers Day at the Races. The Lindy Hopping sequence doesn’t start until about 3.25 mins in, and the Lindy Hop dancing really starts about 5 mins in, but I love the section with Harpo and Who Dat Man that precedes it.

And no, I can’t dance like that.

Here’s a modern version of it.

I can’t dance like that either – but I try (the front couple in this demo were my first teachers).

In the last twenty years there has been a massive revival of Swing Dancing, particularly Lindy Hop and some of the original dancers were still with us until very recently. Most famous and beloved was Frankie Manning (d. 2009). Here he is age 90 doing the Shim Sham (a group Lindy dance)

(and if you want to be cheered and moved watch these two clips of villagers in India doing the Shim Sham in honour of Frankie on his Birthday).

Lindy is a partnered dance for all ages and everyone dances with everyone, you are either a lead (traditionally male) or a follow (female), but both men and women try the other roles. There are clubs in most big cities across the world run by enthusiasts. It is the best and most enjoyable exercise I know and I swear it has given my knees a new lease of life.

Monster Hosta

Posted on May 27, 2014 by hilarycustancegreen

A couple of years or so ago the plant in the corner outside our kitchen window died. The area was mostly shady and tended to get dripped on from the gutter above, so to fill it quickly we bought a healthy-looking hosta. It grew and grew and we kept moving it further out from the corner. By July last year this host was taking over and almost meeting a nearby rhododendron.

Hosta Sum and Substance

So in January we moved the rhododendron and paved a whole new section (https://greenwritingroom.com/2014/02/26/the-garden-moves/). Meanwhile the tub looked all small and innocent.