Ways With Words

Taking Tea With Penelope Lively

This sounds like the title of a collection of poems by Wendy Cope. Well it isn’t. Nor is it a metaphor for anything; it’s just what it says. Julia Blackburn, Steve and myself had tea with Penelope to discuss a course on Memoir Writing Ways With Words is running in France. Penelope and Julia will talk about their own memoir writing and encourage and help others who want to write theirs. Lots of people do. Laurie Lee said that a day unrecorded was a day lost. It’s as if it hadn’t happened. Probably people feel like that about their whole lives: unless they leave some memoir within a generation it will be as if their life hadn’t happened.

I think memoir writing should be encouraged. We do lose lives and domestic history if no-one records them. Even a shopping list from our grandparents would be fascinating. “What’s Dolly Blue, humbugs, Liquorice Allsorts, tripe, barmcakes?” my children would probably ask. “It cost 1/11d – what does that mean?”

Laurie Lee writes too of the difficulties of choosing what to record from your past. There is so much to write about. How do you select? Every day could be a book, yet it might get tedious for a reader. Even devoted family members can feel, “I’ve got a life to lead too. Get on with it granny!”
So memoir writers have to be strict with themselves and pick out what will make interesting reading.

“Can you ever be totally truthful?” Laurie Lee wonders and decides it is impossible. All you can say is that this is how life seemed to you at the time. To someone else who was there it might appear very different. Writing about family, particularly parents, can be challenging. Julia Blackburn’s book about her parents, ‘The Three of Us’, has just been published. There have been many reviews and interviews. All full of praise for her honesty, generosity and non-judgemental approach to parents who appear wild, irresponsible, feckless. When her mother was dying she said to Julia, “I expect you will write about me now.” Her mother’s and father’s sides of the story would have been different but that’s the nature of memoirs. All material for interesting discussions in France.

Penelope has written about her childhood in ‘Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived’; she has used her grandmother’s house and its contents to hook stories of her past in ‘A House Unlocked’. This July at the festival at Dartington Hall she will look back on her long writing life – a talk that will be like a memoir. Work, interests, houses, belongings are all good topics for memoirs.

Taking tea in Penelope’s lovely, sunny, book and picture-lined living room we mused over these points and how they will be tackled in France in September.

As befits a lady of letters Penelope had an interesting list of books that all memoirists should read.

So I shall read, think and look forward to hearing Penelope and Julia speak at Dartington. And even more to having 5 days in France with them both in September.
I might even start to write my Ways With Words memoirs – instead of just a blog.

Note these dates:

Ways With Words at Dartington Hall, Devon -
Saturday 12 July, 10am Penelope Lively will talk about 40 years in books, aspects of a writing life.
Thursday 17 July, 5pm Julia Blackburn will talk about her book, ‘The Three of Us’.

Memoir Writing Course, Perigord, France, 8-12 September 2008
Tutors: Penelope Lively and Julia Blackburn
Click here for further details

I am a Blogger, Unlike Kilvert, Pepys or Clive

“I am a blogger”, I’ve enjoyed saying to family and friends this weekend. I got the best response from a young friend who said that I was a ‘natural blogger’. To a new blogger this felt a huge compliment but Steve pointed out that it might be an insult.

I could have predicted that our friend Clive would not be impressed. He is a naturalist, a historian, a storyteller, a polymath – in fact a Renaissance man. But the one thing he isn’t is a 21st century man. In fact he is stockpiling typewriter ribbons in case they become unavailable – one of his biggest nightmares. He is a great diaryist and at the moment is writing a natural history diary. He told us about a swan’s nest he had found and described the large, white, smooth eggs. “That would make a lovely blog entry,” I told him. “You could write about the eggs and then the hatching and take photographs with a digital camera to post on your blog.” This would involve two pieces of equipment that Clive doesn’t use (or probably even know about) so I don’t think he’ll take up my idea. He prefers to emulate Gilbert White or Kilvert, not a blogger.

Clive Fairweather
At present Clive is reading (maybe rereading) Ben and James Long’s book, 'The Plot Against Pepys'. He loves the historical detail and was full of wonder at the way the authors have discovered even what the weather was like on various days in the 17th century. I couldn’t resist saying that Pepys would have made a good blogger. Eventually Steve and Clive got so tired of hearing the B word they said they would make a swear box and every time I used it I’d have to give money to charity. Though really Steve is enjoying this blog. Not because of what it says but because he is the exact opposite of Clive and is fascinated by the possibilities of new technology. The design of the blog is Steve’s work. Without him it would be all content and no style.

James & Ben Long
After our pub supper we rushed home as I wanted to watch Gore Vidal on the South Bank Show. Clive, who, of course, doesn’t have a television, returned to his Pepys.

At least I can say what I like about Clive in this blog. He’s unlikely to read it.

The Natural Break:

Sunday 20 July, 12 noon, Great Hall, Dartington Hall
Clive Fairweather will be taking people on a journey into the 14th century through storytelling and history. He will be joined by Stephen Tyler and Katy Marchant playing a hurdy gurdy and bagpipes.
Very Great Hall, very 1390.

Friday 11 July, 4pm, Great Hall, Dartington Hall
James and Ben Long will talk about 'The Plot Against Pepys' to Penelope Lively.

What's in a Name?

We hate making a mistake over a writer’s name in a Ways With Words programme. They hate it even more so we try to be very careful. We check with publishers, Google, Amazon – but sometimes they get it wrong, which means we do. And sometimes we are just careless – or tired I prefer to say.
“ How did we do that?” we moan and groan when the programme comes back from the printer and the mistake that we’d overlooked, despite many checks, leaps from the page to taunt us.

This year’s cast of characters has been sent to trip us up. How come we have a Guy Watson and a Gay Watson on the same programme? The first is Riverford Farm Organic boxes, the second happiness and Buddhism. Just one vowel separates their names but if I mix them up the audience may need to find happiness in carrots or meditate over a lettuce.

Simon Barron and Michael Baron are just trying to be difficult. Who has the double R?  Is it Simon the folk singer or Michael the bat poet? Oh no! We have succeeded 50% of the time. When Michael is doing his bat poems we have given him one R in his surname. Correct. When he is leading a bat walk we have been more generous with the Rs – incorrect.

Kate Mosse, the best selling author of ‘Labyrinth’, becomes the model if we leave off the E. Even without having a surname like a plant I bet some people come to the event expecting to hear about the catwalk.

We almost have a football team of Jonathons and Jonathans this year to test us.

Alexander Waugh is chairing The Daily Telegraph’s balloon debate. I’ve met Alexander many times. I find him witty, charming, clever. He is a big favourite of mine but I could easily slip a generation or two and call him by his grandfather’s name (Evelyn) or his father’s name (Auberon). It’s not helped by the fact he looks so like them both.

Waugh - Alexander, Auberon or Evelyn?

Shakespeare thinks it doesn’t matter.
“That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet”, he says.
However if he was coming to the festival and I called him Wilf Shakespear I bet he would soon stop mentioning roses.

But we can guarantee that whatever we call the writers at Ways With Words they are all as fragrant as Mary Archer.

Useful Information

Note the date Saturday 19 July – 8pm, Great Hall at Ways With Words if you want to come and see Alexander Waugh pilot his imaginary balloon up to the firmament while the panellists argue for a favourite writer’s right to remain in the basket.
I wonder who Andrew Davies, Carmen Callil, Philip Hensher will champion?

Too Late for God on the Programme

"Too much text", Steve keeps shouting as he designs the pages of the festival programme and lines of copy keep tumbling into the margin. When I write the programme I try to give clear and enticing information about each event while he worries about design, the clear layout and the postage costs. It can make for marital stress but when I get the call I remember my 'O' level training in precis writing and try to say the same amount in half the words.

The last weeks, days, minutes before the festival programme goes to the printers can be nerve-racking. Every slot on every day has to have an event nestling in it. Often there are two events running concurrently to give the customers choice, as well as the workshops, discussions, poetry readings, walks. The speakers have to be confirmed, the venues and times checked. Then there is the proof reading and the arguments over the commas.

Eventually we have done all we can. The deadline has arrived and Steve is just about to go to the printers... when the phone goes. A writer has discovered that the day he is coming to the festival is his daughter's graduation day.

"Of course you must go," I say magnanimously. There's no alternative. If he missed her graduation for Ways With Words he'd be miserable and probably make us miserable too. He'll come another day. So I am back on the phone tactfully shuffling writers around. Steve is back on his computer redesigning.

The printers are waiting; the machines are ready to churn out 35,000 copies. We think it's all over but like a football game the last kick can change everything.

There is another phone call. It's Jon Snow.
"Kay, I'm sorry I didn't reply to your emails but I'd really love to come to the festival."
"We'd love you to come", I say  and I really mean it. He is such a thought-provoking, lively, challenging speaker; I am delighted. Steve is switching on his computer again.

At last he drives off to the printers. If God phones now wanting to speak at Ways With Words I shall have to say, "Sorry God, you are too late". But He doesn't.

I carry out a Fresco chair [like the colourful ones we have in the Outdoor Reading Room at Dartington Hall] into the meadow. I sit under an apple tree with a glass of wine and, what else, but a good book.

USEFUL INFORMATION

If you want to know what the finished programme looks like you can download a copy from the Ways With Words website.

You can also buy tickets on-line from the same website from 27 May.

If you'd like a paper programme, join the Ways With Words mailing list.