A Stretch In Limousin – RSVP

Saturday 24th September

The woodburnerman came round to measure up for the flue the other day and faithfully promised on the lives of all the great saints and some of the more piffling ones (St Hubbins, St Egregious) that by the end of next Wednesday (September 28th), I shall have fire in my living room.

This is just as well as the mornings are becoming cold. Maddie – who ordinarily shows every sign of being a genuine certifiable cretin – has cleverly realised that the quickest and easiest and least dangerous way of getting me out of bed and getting her breakfast is by jumping up on my guitar and biting the strings. Afraid that she’ll manage to gnaw through one of them and quite possibly lose an eye in the process, I get up. I don’t even grumble about it anymore. It seems like the natural order of things. (I could of course move the guitar to the other room, but I too show every sign of being a genuine certifiable cretin.) Then I go outside and urinate at the edge of the woods.

Often the cats urinate with me. This gives me a perverse amount of pleasure.

I know. I know.

Then I feed the cats, scurry back under the covers and shiver myself back to sleep. But from Thursday onwards, when the feeding is done, I can – in theory – light the fire, huddle round it and write for three hours instead. In theory.

So, in preparation for this brave burning new world, I have spent much of the last few days preparing wood. Using the chainsaw – which now seems to be behaving itself – I turned a large pile of long-dead trees and disused fence posts into a large pile of firewood. I did the same with piles of planks, broken furniture and other bits of finished wood and am currently working through a sprawling heap of around 200 broom and ash saplings from a few months ago, the vast majority of which are already dry enough to snap and burn.

Preparing the wood is giving me a great deal of pleasure. Pleasure – and yes, goddammit – pride.

I know people have been doing this every winter for millennia – and without the use of powertools – but I haven’t.

In fact, this time last year I was still stuck in an air-conditioned office overlooking Oxford Street reading arse-numbing legal guff and making up puns like ‘Merger Most Horrid’ and ‘99 Problems But A Pitch Ain’t One’.

So although it may sound to you, mollycoddled in your pizza-bellied, cable-tellied, centrally-heated, tumble-dried, microwaved, fat-piped idyll like I’m going in the wrong direction, I have to disagree.

Shit, that sounded just a little like I was protesting too much, didn’t it?

I do miss the internet, I must admit.

Balls to it. Tomorrow, I’m going to get the log-splitter out.

Yes, pictures of the cats. Don’t wither. I’m out of time. Mondays are off too. That’s how it goes. Life is like that. I wish there was an expression in French I could use at this point but there isn’t.

Next week ladies’ shoes in the road, more marrow talk and fire indoors.

Tell your friends.

Boom.

I have decided to fall in love with a part-time librarian. Or at least try. To be honest, she’s not even my type. She’s blonde and thin with a nose like – it seems to me – a candle in the wind. But these are desperate times. And this is not Paris.

Her name is Sophie. I know because she was working on Thursday afternoon and each time she answered the telephone she would have to explain that she wasn’t the other woman who also works there. ‘C’est Sophie,’ she would say. And that was that really. That was enough. Immediately I thought, ‘I shall fall in love with this woman. My love shall be forced, half-feigned, utterly doomed and deliciously unreciprocated. I shall tread the icy waters of winter whilst conjuring her face from the flames of burning wood and the fleeting formless clouds of my breath on the cold air and I shall compose painful poetry to her subtle smiling beauty which is, in reality, not up my alley. I shall never discover anything more about her than her name, the length of her nose and the fact that she has tiny, delicate hiccups, like corn popping underwater. But that will be enough. For this is not Paris.’

Having become a member the day before, on Thursday I borrowed my first books – 10 Histoires d’Animaux and Le Petit Livre des 100 Premiere Fois. As I handed them across to Sophie – O Sophie! Free from blemishes! Eyes bright like freshly peeled plums in pools of tropical rainwater – I said, in my best appalling French, ‘Some children’s books. For me. To learn. I must learn.’

‘Oui,’ she replied, with two-fifths of a smile.

I must admit, I expected more. Not that she would gasp in awe and drop to her knees, but at least some slender recognition that I existed for her as more than just some passing vapour, poorly packaged in sagging, stretching, slowly disappearing skin.

Alas, I do not.

It was perfect.

Maybe next week, after checking the library internet history for inappropriate surfing, finding my site, noticing her name and translating this post into French, she will approach me as I sit at computer number one, dreaming of our future together in the Dordogne, or in Paris, and she will slip me a note. The note will read: ‘I know what you are. You repulse me.’

And then I will know. She is the one.

Saturday 17th September, after noon

Driving rain trumpeting tunelessly from the anaemic dustsheet of a dead sky. Two fat wood pigeons within smiting distance, desperate for tupping, flap and beat their wings within the folds of the nearest beech, or ash – must master trees. Drip drip drip drip drip from the cracked plastic eaves. Soggy gloves and unplanted potatoes eye my drifting days, unjudging, shrivelling, shrinking away.

All week, give or take a day or two here or there, shifting rocks to fix steps and make a path into the stump-strewn field. Long-sleeved and -legged to ward off the poison of careless plants, heaving long-mossed boulders from the outer circles of the forest, afraid the forest might slip into the river and beyond, knocking France off its axis. Does it go? It goes.

All week, give or take nothing, haunted, plagued into dolorous dreaming by the continued bleating of the unshakeable hand, the wrecked wrist that will not be washed away. Not – thank God – like that time in Penny Lane, vaulting a railing for cash at the lights, catching a foot and landing on two hands. ‘You deserved that,’ Scoused an old man, dead now no doubt. No, I didn’t. Forty minutes later the pains came, trumpeting from an unready brain. Two hairline fractures, twin slings, smoking cigarettes from a specially fashioned coathanger. How did I wipe my arse? Don’t ask.

Now the proud toil of the rock-work half-done and even the finger-friendly ring-pulls of the cassoulet tin stabs through the rheumatic mush of an old man’s hand. I can’t even toss a kitten on the bed without terrible pangs of physical remorse.

Kittens now curled tight against the encroaching cold, awaiting the wisdom of the woodburner man. I am a man who cannot. Four hours to fit a catflap.

Look at it.

Four hours. Hacking away with a broken blade.

Four hours.

The absence of conversation makes me waffle, as does the reading of the right books at entirely the wrong time.

Tonight, however, there shall be peoplefolk, and the kittens will have to fend for themselves.

Dis-moi merde.

No one was more surprised than I, when after all the talk on here of male and female flowers, urine and batter, I caught sight of this prize-winning marrow. (It’s there on the left.)

It really did win a prize too. I awarded myself a box of wine.

I was very grateful.

I’m not sure how long I should leave it though, before I cook it up. I’m also not sure how I should cook it up. Any advice most graciously received….

This is really an open letter to myself. If it helps you in any way at all, I am glad. Now pay me.

1. Persevere. I could actually stop there because that’s what it comes down to and everything else I have to say is basically ‘persevere’ fed through a time-wasting thought-thesaurus. But I won’t.

I know it’s obvious but you’re never going to write a bestseller if you give up after 25 years of rejection and disappointment. Tempting though it often is.

2. Court rejection. Embrace it. Love it. Stroke it till it weeps in your hand. Rejection is your friend. It’s a numbers game after all. The more you put yourself out there, the more possibilities you create. The more ideas you pitch, the more editors, agents and publishers you hassle, the more likely it becomes that one of them will say yes.

3. Develop your masochistic streak. If you can learn to enjoy the fact that nobody wants to read what you write, every editorial snub becomes a blob of hot candle wax falling slowly onto your glans. Sure it stings, but wait a moment… mmmmm, that’s nice.

Remember, I speak from experience. And rejection is even more painful if you’ve managed at some stage a modicum of success. After I had my book published and it failed to sell in any great quantities despite being MAGNIFICENT (self-belief is key), I immediately went back to being rejected. I even have an agent now. His role, as far as I can tell, is to take 20% of my rejections for me. I tried to negotiate a higher percentage for him, but he rejected me. Now he doesn’t even answer my emails and you know what? I love it!

4. Believe in yourself. There is always the chance, of course, that like those harrowing tone-deaf mutants on X Factor who genuinely think they can be the next Charlotte Church, your self-belief is misguided. Do not give this a second thought. You have the voice of an angel.

5. If necessary, delude yourself. There are some experts who will tell you that there comes a certain point when you have to give up. Maybe forty years and 20,000 rejections down the line, they say, you should accept that maybe you haven’t got what it takes to be a successful author and call it a day. These people are miserable, defeatist doom-merchants. Ignore them. Believe in tomorrow. Better still, believe in later this afternoon.

6. Throw caution to the wind. When it comes to writing your pitch or covering letter, you really have nothing to lose. Be adventurous. Be audacious. Be outrageous. After all, you’ve got absolutely nowhere with your standard, cautious, courteous approach. Besides, editors read that same stuff every day. Try a different tack. Better to stand out as a lunatic than blend into the background with all the other losers. For example, remember when you wrote that snotty email to that codpiece who edits that dreadful man’s ezine taking him to task for ignoring your pitch? And then he wrote back to you and pretended that he had been interested in your pitch and that he would have got round to replying and that you’d just ruined your chances? And then you wrote back to him and put your balls on the line and said that’s how it was and you weren’t about to apologise for it? And then he said, in a turnaround that astonished and delighted you, that he admired your balls and you should send him a trial piece? And then you never heard from him again? Well, that. Except for the last bit. Bastard.

7. Sleep with the editor. If you have the pulchritude and sex appeal necessary to blind the editor of your target magazine or publishing house to what they perceive as your literary shortcomings, *and* the necessary lack of integrity to sleep at night when the editor has nodded off, then go for it. (Self-belief and self-delusion may also come into play here, not to mention developing that masochistic streak for when said editor spits coffee in your eyes.)

8. Make your negatives into a positive. You are unique. No one has failed in quite the same inimitable style that you have. Now take your utter uselessness and mould it into your unique selling point.

9. Don’t be bitter. Send off the odd snotty email if you really can’t help yourself, but delete those fantasies you have about tracking down every editor who’s ever ignored you and cold-bloodedly murdering them in a manner that is particularly fitting. It might have worked for Vincent Price, but the Buddhist in you would not be happy. And prison might have worked for Hitler, but Hitler is not a good role model. Really, I know this one is difficult for you, but I must insist, don’t be bitter.

10. Shut up and get on with it. Face facts – even if you want to give up – and you know you have tried – you can’t. You’re driven. Although in many ways it is an unmitigated curse, it also gives your life meaning and without it – failure or not – you would not exist. You are defined by your desire to write, and to be read, because your ego is overpowering and because writing is just about the only thing you believe you can actually do. Or in other words, persevere, and know that one day, one day, people will be queuing up to pay for your words.

It’s only a matter of time.

(Self-belief is key.)

Good luck.

So. The working title of the new book I’m trying to write is as follows:

On Holiday By Mistake :: Travels Through Hypershame With a Defective Photographic Memory.

What do you think?

It’s essentially a collection of the moments of shame and pain and misery to which I have been subjected or have subjected myself in different countries – all the horrible things I’ve done or been witness to that I’ve never previously written about. It’s a comedy. I started it last week and have already written – scrawled in pen on A4 paper – over 50 pages.

Hopefully, it’ll be all over by Christmas.

Wish me luck.

Saturday 10th September

I do believe that today, after cycling to the library and the bakery, after accidentally drinking wine at just after noon (I swear I thought it was 2pm), and after making some solid progress with the stone steps from the vegetable beds to the top of the field, I do believe I made a decision.

My decision was this. You see this beautiful old French moped?

I’m not going to buy it.

Nor this one…

I have decided in fact, to do without motorised transport for the duration of my stay in France. This will make my life harder, there is no doubt about that. It will mean that I will have to stay home for the duration of the winter, probably from November till February. But you must suffer for your art. Plus, thinking about it, it may also save my life.

In Italy I had four mopeds in four years, and four crashes, writing off three of the four bikes. If I got a moped here, I would drive drunk. I know I would. That’s almost the whole point of getting one, so that I can get out and socialise once in a while – and I know that I won’t have the self-control not to get stupidly drunk and drive headfirst at full throttle into a ditch, or even worse, into a child in a ditch.

Also, if I don’t spend €300 on a 50CC death machine, I can put it towards a new netbook with a 10-hour battery and spend the whole of the winter working, which is after all, the reason I’m here.

I have weighed up the pros and cons, as one is supposed to do when considering a decision of considerable import. Here are my findings:

The Pros

- I would be free to go where I want when I want

- it may stop me going mad from loneliness

The Cons

- I can’t really afford it

- it would distract me from my work

- I would have to ride it illegally as I do not yet have the linguistic wherewithal to pass the test that would make it legal

- I would probably die and kill one or any number of ditch-dwelling children

There it is. Cold hard logic decrees that I should probably give it a miss. Plus of course, going mad from loneliness is no bad thing. I mean, at least I’ll be working. And just think, if I don’t buy a moped, I will emerge from my cocoon in March positively oozing bestsellers.

So yes, that’s it.

It’s a decision I’ve made.

Friday 9th September, 20:44

The future seems a lot clearer in the dark. I’m looking out across the field and the work I’ve done today clearly foreshadows next Spring, which, one way or another, will be a time for change.

There is a single line of colour on what I can see of the horizon through the trees at the bottom of the field. It’s like the remnants of an egg-yolk stain – or maybe a blood stain – on the edge of the cuffs of a disappearing day.

You really notice the days out here. The couple of books I’ve read so far by English writers living in France have both included moments in which the writers in question have said something along the lines of ‘Suddenly the seasons have changed. You really don’t notice it until it is upon you.’ In both of these cases, I read this and thought, ‘What is wrong with these people?’ I should think that the only reason you might not notice something so glaringly obvious as the gradual changes in your immediate environment is that you are blinded by the fact that your head is lodged firmly inside your own large intestine. I notice it. You’d notice it too, I know you would.

The first trees to moult. The summer insects losing their sway on mealtimes, which for the moment, but not for much longer, are still outside. The temperature in the morning dipping, dripping, dropping, like a leak slowing to an icicle. The sun becoming that little bit lazier every day, its bedtime getting earlier, its bed shifting ever-further west. Or east. I’m not good on the science. You would know. And you would probably say something like, ‘Aah, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is imposing upon us, my boy. We must set to preparing ourselves for the biting of the bones in earnest.’ And I would say, ‘Don’t call me “my boy”, please. I am a man. Call me “my man”.’ And you would do so, but with a slightly mocking smile.

I’m not out tonight. I was invited somewhere I really want to go to, but there are no trains back and I’m tired of imposing.

So instead I am reading and writing and wallowing in the peace of the day’s end – crickets chirruping – or cicadas I suppose, again the science lets me down – distant dogs shouting pointlessly, acorns falling and crackering off every branch, owls spooking one another with their ghost noises, the sneeping of sleepless sneeps seeping through the encroaching gloom and a gobshite river running through it all like a clock.

And now – OK, I admit it – I can no longer see.

Is it in Gone With the Wind – I’m sure it’s in lots of films but is Gone With the Wind one of them, where Scarlett O’Hara is bathing in the front room in a large cast iron tub while the maid pours hot water over her?

Well, that’s what I want for the winter – a young, stinking dirty Vivien Leigh naked in my front room. Failing that, I’ll take the maid. Failing that, I’ll take the tub. For the moment, as the intensely hot days are definitely on the decrease, I pour a kettle of boiling water into the bathroom sink, stand in the bath beside it and wash myself with a torn square of old towel. Like I feel sure Virginia Woolf must have done the day before she filled her pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse. (If I were going to kill myself in a river by the way, I would do my damnedest to make sure it was the River Wye.) Anyhow, in a few short weeks, when the temperature drops, the kettle in the bathroom may very well become untenable.

Of course, having hot running water would solve that problem in one fell swoop and my sister is happy to have it plumbed in. So that’s one of my priorities for this week, to find a plumber.

I would prefer Vivien Leigh though. She was very lovely when she wasn’t snarling at people and having electroconvulsive therapy. Lovely.

Oh no, wait, I’m thinking of Nathalie Wood.