Nothing to write home about

At the exact time I’m writing this a year ago today I was waiting for flight KL1093 to take me to my new home, somewhere undefined in the North of England.

I didn’t realise that a whole year later, “home” would still be largely undefined. I didn’t know I’d be coming back to the worst economic crisis for decades. And though I tried to prepare myself for it, I had no idea that the reverse culture shock I was about to experience would lead to confusion in almost every aspect of my daily life.

Now a whole year has flown by almost as fast as that plane that carried me over the North Sea to my new life. I haven’t done all the things I wanted to, not by half. There are still many doubts and uncertainties, and on paper you could say I was better off where I was. But Amsterdam was always liked that – it ticked all the boxes but something in my heart felt wrong. And a year on, in an old-new country I still have boxes that need ticking but my heart at long last, knows it’s in the right place.

… when we walked over the fields to the cosiest pub in the entire world. It was so good in there that we lingered over an extra pint and  had to walk home along country lanes in the pitch black. And I fell over and got gravel in my hand which meant instead of making dinner for my friends I turned the pages of the cookbook with my good hand and gave orders to my newly appointed sous chefs.

But she didn’t know any of that yet. Except maybe how sweet the beer tasted, and how cosy that pub was. Which could be why her smile lights up the room.

When I was at this pub in Earl Sterndale, two old boys from Buxton were cramming in a few pints before the bus left, a bunch of tourists entertained us by ordering “a pint of that bitter sheep ale please,” and I learnt that the Quiet Woman that the pub was named after only stopped talking when she lost her head.

I risked a self portrait in a corner where notices not to crowd around the fire, or throw cigarette butts into it, or use it as a drying room, were plastered on the walls.

There was no sign against photography but just to be sure, I kept quiet and only opened my mouth to savour the perfect pint of Black Sheep.

Now it might seem a little crazy to spend 80 quid on a pair of shoes that when you put them on, feel like you’re  not actually wearing shoes but that’s exactly what I did a few weeks back.

I can honestly say it’s the best shoe purchase I’ve ever made.

True, the toe pods might make my feet look rather Neanderthal, and I can imagine some puzzled faces if anyone noticed my footprints on a muddy stretch of grass, but it’s not about looks. Fashion issues are beside the point. What’s important is how these shoes feel.

For anyone who’s kicked off their shoes and gone barefoot these shoes might come as something of a surprise. And the surprise is that when you put them on you still feel as if you’re in bare feet. You can still feel the ground under your feet and if you do step on a stone, you’ll feel it. You have to walk differently, be lighter on your feet, and not thump down on your heels, just as you do when you walk or run barefoot.

I’ve been running in them for about a week now and I’ve had to go back to basics, starting again with a walk/run programme because just like barefoot running, if you don’t build up slowly your feet will be sore and your calf muscles will scream.

And possibly, the good people you pass by on your run will point their fingers in amazement at your choice of footwear. But I can’t tell you about that, because I was too busy enjoying myself to notice anyone around me.

Under normal circumstances, I never would have thought of making this book, but I listened to a podcast that convinced me that under some circumstances, vanity publishing is ok.

Now I don’t mean the kind of rip off vanity publishing where you sink thousands of £££ or $$$ and get a pile of shoddy books that moulder under your bed or behind your sofa for the next five years because you were convinced that if only your masterpiece was published, people would flock to buy it. No, I mean the print on demand variety, where, if you go into it with your eyes open and a realistic idea of what you’re going to achieve, then it can make a satisfying conclusion to something like the 52 weeks project.

Yes,  I could have printed off the photos and put them into an album, or made my own hand bound book, but there is something about seeing the project as a whole, printed up into book form.

If you are going to do something similar, it’s not for the faint-hearted. Sure, you could just use some of your flickr photos, but the chances are they won’t fit right, or not all of your photos will be print quality. And let’s not get talk about colour management. It took me hours and hours or rescanning and editing, and a frightening moment when the software I was using crashed and I lost all my work. The staff at Blurb were really helpful and managed to restore my file just in time (I was making my book for a birthday present and the date was fast approaching.)

So I made myself a book. You can check it out on Blurb. I don’t expect people to flock to buy it in their thousands – that’s not why  I did it. But if anyone does I will be absolutely chuffed.

I can tell you I’ve been busy – and that would be true.
I can tell you I’ve been away – also not a lie.

But the real truth is that for over a month I’ve been finding distractions that take me away from fiction writing and from this blog where I’d have to own up to the truth.

I’ve been writing other stuff – fact isn’t a problem, but somehow the idea of making things up has scared me.

I told myself I was simply busy with other things, that I was waiting on an answer from an agent. That I would get back to editing an almost-finished novel just as soon as I could. But the nagging thought that prevented me from opening that incomplete novel and making it whole was what happens next?

There would be a blank page and I’d have to come up with something new.

An original idea.

And that’s where it got scary.

There is one advantage with working on a novel, there is only one intimidating moment when you sit down and stare at a blank page. Once you’ve started, all you have to do is carry on. All – I know, it’s not as easy as I’m making it sound, but the start is the worst bit, I promise.

So while I haven’t been lazing around in bed I have been avoiding this blog and my writing notepad. And it’s been a process to get back to it. Everyone has their own methods. Mine involves ignoring writing for a while, then easing back into it with a diary entry or two, just to get the words flowing. Not made up words at this stage, not fiction. But facts are still made up from words, just like fiction is.

Then a chance conversation at the weekend gave me an idea, and before I knew it I was writing a story.

The good news is, it’s like riding a bicycle – once you get in the saddle it all comes back to you.  So now I’m happy to say, I’ve gotta go, I have a story to finish. But I’ll be back soon, I promise.

By my age, you’d think I’d know all there is to know about my parents.

But the things I know about my dad are composed of distant memories and what I’ve learned in the course of a few phone calls, letters and emails, and two weekends bookending the last twenty years.

So there are many things that you could probably tell me about your fathers, and I wouldn’t have a clue about how to reply.

But I can tell you two things – mine bakes a damn good loaf and has grown the best amaryllis I have ever seen.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

The house I wanted to buy last year is back on the market.

I found out a couple of months back, through an innocent listing in an email that made my heart stop beating for a second. I spent the next few days mentally reviewing the floor plan, analysing it from different angles. If we shifted the bathroom from here, or converted the store room into a bedroom. If we put a table in the kitchen… until I’d exhausted all the possibilities. It’s not so much a lack of space, more that the space is in all the wrong places. There’s enough square footage, but whichever way you slice it, not enough room.

Last weekend I went out on a country walk. As we slogged up and over heather moors and picked our way along a muddy forest path, I knew the moment was coming. I’d made my decision and I could live with it, and I was looking forward to gazing down on the little house that could have been ours and admiring that view that really is to die for. And as we stepped out onto the rocks that gave the cottage its name my heart stopped again, just for a second. True, from up there you can see how close to the farm it really is. But the view really is breathtaking.

We walked on and we talked, my mind obsessed with calculations that, if the sums added up, would equal the word ‘home’. I noticed all the footpaths that criss-cross the hills – if we bought that cottage we’d be exploring them on summer evenings, walking to the second highest pub in England for lunch and all the way back home to our front door.

If we moved the water tank. If the hallway could be my office. If we slept above the store room. If only we could knock down a few walls or build an extension. If we could dig down and build a cellar. But we’ve been through all this before and however we lay it out, the right spelling never appears.

Home.

It’s never going to be that.

We wandered on, along dry stone walls covered with moss and lichen. Along the ridge path, splashing through the peat moorland and the conversation turned to other things. We discussed ideas for walks, took a few photos, and strolled down and had lunch,  admiring the view of the reservoir and the hills beyond.

And as I savoured that vista the letters came together in my head. Home. It’s not a place to live, it’s more a state of mind. A feeling of rightness, of belonging. The moment I moved out of Salford and came to live in the High Peak, that’s when I came home. And finding the right place to live is just the full stop at the end of the sentence.

Mr Thomas’s Chop House in the centre of Manchester is housed in an old gin palace.

Apparently binge drinking is nothing new – the Victorians could teach us a thing or two about it. The Chop House is elegantly tiled from floor to ceiling, but rumour has it that it was only to make it easier to hose down the vomit at closing time.

These days it’s an altogether more genteel affair, with middle class ladies and gentlemen dropping in for a glass of wine and a bite to eat after some shopping in nearby St Anne’s Square. The food is fancified traditional English, and though I can’t remember exactly what I ate, it was delicious.