December 2019
Carole Pollard • 6 January 2020
Celebrations and Festive Wreathmaking
MA results are in and I passed with a merit. Much celebration - I didn't realise how important it was to me until I saw the results there on the screen. I have a graduation ceremony booked for March 2020 where I might even get to meet some of the amazing people I studied with and exchanged messages of encouragement with at ludicrous times of the night while we worked away in solitude. I will miss reading their work in our online forums, but hope to see their names on the bookshelves in Waterstones soon.
This is also the Christmas month and so there are door wreaths to be made - involving borrowing some beautiful berried ivy from one of my neighbours who was pleased to have it cut back from her chimney breast. Two groups of wonderful women came along to my wreathmaking workshops in the middle of December. Both evenings were great fun, and in addition to mountains of foliage, flowers and berries there were also copious amounts of fizz, chocolates and mince pies - very festive indeed.
February 2020 will be remembered for the weekend storms we endured, with people being flooded out of their homes - some for the second or third time. Such a sad and terrible time for them. We only suffered a broken fence which will need to be replaced, but that is a tiny inconvenience compared with the life changing destruction many people have suffered. Following the Arvon week, I've been busy writing stories about the character I discovered from a photograph one of our tutors, Tiffany Murray, handed out. I called her Peggy, but she will probably be renamed at some point - I will always think of her as Peggy. She's great - going about her business, not worrying about who she might be upsetting with her honest feedback, but maybe trying to find love - if she even knows what that is. I've also been interviewing some old rockers about their memories of the seventies for my memoir book - that's been interesting research, usually carried out in a pub. It's work! I had a quick trip to Edinburgh by train, which was fun if a bit cold and wet. I love the smells and colours of Edinburgh and we were upgraded in our B&B room - what a fabulous, constantly changing view of Edinburgh we had. We spent hours just looking down on the rooftops, and seeing what landmarks we could identify. When the mist cleared we could even see the Forth Road Bridge and a tip of the Rail Bridge. I could have sat there all weekend, but didn't. There were hostelries to be discovered.
It has long been on my Bucket List to attend an Arvon course and finally I've done it. I was excited and terrified in equal measures - what scared me most? Spending a week in the company of 13 strangers and two awesome authors? No wifi or mobile signal? No wine for company? Being stuck in the middle of nowhere without a car for escape? All of those things, but I had reason to worry about any of them. The 13 strangers were all lovely people - I wasn't the oldest person there, or the youngest, but age didn't come into any of our conversations. No wifi or mobile signal was wonderful (although there was the daily trot up to the cattle grid where there was 4G if the wind was in the right direction). There was wine. And I didn't miss my car at all. What a fabulous week I had! The tutors Russ Litten and Tiffany Murray were amazing - so knowledgeable and generous with their time. The food? What can I say? I had thought I was in for something like 'I'm a Celebrity..', relying on beans and rice and was assuming there would be drastic weight loss - WRONG! Local produce included wonderful cheeses, fruit and vegetables and I thoroughly enjoyed the night when it was my turn (in a team of four) to cook the Vegan Tandoori Cauliflower and Butternut Squash Curry. It has been said that I moaned a bit about the prospect of cooking this meal, but I would say that only did that to heighten the delight at how delicious it was - and I was so impressed that I've cooked it since I got home. My guests enjoyed it and requested seconds! Did the Arvon course live up to my thirty years of anticipation? Absolutely and I'd move into Totleigh Barton tomorrow if they would let me.
A head-clearing walk along the beautiful beach at Saunton Sands in North Devon is a good place to plan for the coming decade, after finally submitting the final assessment of my Masters in Creative Writing with The Open University. No more studying for me for a while. What am I writing now? I'm slowly moving away from writing for an examiner, after studying with The Open University for six years, and I am enjoying writing what I want to write, and at my own pace. The study was great - giving me a few years of deadlines that are necessary sometimes, otherwise time just slips away and no writing is completed at all. I'm helping a local businesswoman with her social media posts and the content for her website, to promote her business. I am writing a cv for a local lass who needs a change of direction. My memoir is almost ready to be submitted - that will be an interesting exercise! I have an idea for a fictional novel that I want to write. But first.... I have signed up for a Writing Course with The Arvon Foundation - almost a week in the middle of the Devon countryside with no phone, no wifi and no TV. Scarey, but I've decided, like many other people, that 2020 will be the year of change, and I am looking forward to the challenge.
