Saturday 29 February 2020

Leap Year Day

I am writing this on Saturday, 29th February, which makes it Leap Year Day. Currently, the sun is shining in a blue sky although there has been a flurry of raindrops against my window.

I woke early this morning and decided to do my shopping straight away in order to beat Jorge the approaching storm, which is due to hit the West of Ireland in the next hours - two counties are on red alert. Not surprisingly, nearly everyone had the same idea. My shopping took longer as I stopped and chatted to any number of acquaintances. In Ireland, the big topic is always the weather: 'Cold, isn't it?'; 'Lovely to see the sun'; I wonder will we get the storm?'

I have stocked up on crispbread and cans of soup - just in case I come down with the coronavirus and have to self-isolate for 14 days. I can't believe I wrote self-isolate! What a whole new range of words can evolve around a storm! We now have a storm warning nearly every weekend. It used to be "strong winds" now its galeforce, gusting up to 150 kmph. Even worse are the rainfall warnings. The ground is saturated, there is no place for the water from swollen rivers to go so they burst their banks and swamp huge areas.
The newspaper headlines which I glimpsed in the supermarket carry assurances from the racing folk that the Cheltenham Festival will go ahead. I sincerely hope so as I enjoy watching this on television and always put on a few small bets. It is bad enough that the Italy/Ireland rugby match has been postponed but our human rights are in danger if the horse racing is off the cards.

I have a sore throat today, so I will stay at home and keep warm  - that North wind nearly took the skin off of my face on the way to the shops this morning. I will do a bit of writing and then I will make a pot of tea and watch Casablanca.
Here's looking at you, kid!

Friday 21 February 2020

This Writing Life

We are almost two months into the new year and I have finally settled down to write my next novel. It will be a contemporary romance/family tale set during the Christmas period. Until I started writing it, I felt something was missing and yet I was reluctant to sit down and work out plot details. As usually happens when I write, I made several starts and changed several characters. Now that I have written the first 10,000 words, the characters themselves are driving the plot as they say in publishing circles. So I am pretty sure of the ending although not so sure how the characters are going to get there.
I started writing when I was around twelve years old. I still remember why I started. I grew up on a farm and we had been bringing in the hay. This involved putting a chain under a cock of hay and having the horse haul it into the haggard. I bet there are some readers who are scratching their heads and asking what's a cock of hay/what's a haggard? - that is a measure of how farming has evolved. Nowadays we have silage for the animals instead of dried grass = hay. Silage is made from fermented grass stored in a silo. Not half as romantic as cutting the hay, putting it into cocks when it is dry and then hauling it into the haggard, all the while with an anxious eye on the weather. That's progress for you.
Haggard according to my modern Collins dictionary is "looking tired and ill".  In Ireland, the Ireland I grew up in, a haggard was almost always an area adjacent to the farm yard or what once was a farm yard. Traditionally this was an enclosed area on a farm for stacking hay, grain or other fodder. It probably comes from some Gaelic word. Never mind, it is hardly ever used nowadays. Another bit of useless information to enrich your conversation at a social event. 
Anyway, as children we used to sit on the cock of hay as it was being dragged into the haggard by the horse. We got a lot of fun out of this, as we did out of so many simple things, and I remember that I wanted to put it down on paper, this feeling of summer and the sweet smell of the hay and the pungent smell of the horse's sweat. And that is why I started a story called "Lily in the Country", which of course I never finished. It did give me an appetite for writing, though, which has stayed with me.One of the nicest compliments I received was last year when a reader having read one of my crime novels set in the Kerry mountains, told me "I thought I was there". 
The first rule of writing is BIC = butt in chair. You keep writing until you get it right and maybe then a reader tells you something like this and it really makes it all worthwhile.