Cavorting with Corvids

It's dreadfully hot, here in London (which means, not nearly as hot as in Spain, Egypt or any other hot place you can name). Very few houses here have air conditioning, because our weather is so variable that it's simply not worth the investment. So we swelter away, moaning. British people do love to moan about the weather and the TV's awash with dire warnings about the 'dangers' of the heat. In all honesty it depends how you earn your living, if you're fortunate enough to be able to do that at all. Living on the first floor as I do, very near to London's ancient Epping Forest, it's a pleasure to write or edit in a cool flat with all the windows open. The raucous croaks of the rooks in the nearby trees are a great backdrop for anyone writing historical fiction.

Still when I'm not cavorting with corvids or editing my work in progress, I'm finding it an absolute pleasure to get out and shop, walk or write in post-pandemic conditions. My diary entries on this date two years ago contained such sad comments as 'Had to buy a coffee and drink it on the street bench, as all cafes are closed.' Overjoyed to see my local pub, with its real ale and Sunday roast lunch, open again. 

On Friday work took me to a part of London I really love - the River Thames, around the Tower of London. At present the Tower has millions of gorgeous flowers planted in the moat, providing a little more joy to the bees and a lot more to the humans. The Tower speakers are playing 'Music to Grow Flowers'. It's a specially commissioned piece, by composer Erland Cooper. It is said that the ancient Egyptians used music to make the corn grow higher and faster. Wonder whether the Tower's flowers will, in fact, grow better as a result of Erland Cooper's creativity?

Over the past month I joined NanoWrimo's Summer Camp - in which you give yourself a month to work on a treasured project, usually a novel, consistently just as though you were away at camp. I like to imagine I'm genuinely sleeping out under the stars, in the desert maybe, for that short period. 

Sleeping out under the Stars - Image by Shutterstock

During CampNano some writers edit the novel they drafted manically during NanoWrimo's famous November event. This year, I concluded the final chapter of a long-standing project. It's been bugging me for a while - and best of all, a short extract of that story has won 3rd prize in the Foxes' Retreat Summer Solstice Writing Competition. Yay!

Jennifer Pittam, published in: Aquarist & Pondkeeper, Astrology Monthly, Cosmopolitan, Ether Books, People's Friend, Prediction Magazine, Romany Routes, The Lady

Competitions won: Coast to Coast Short Story Competition, 2nd Prize; Writers' Village Flash Fiction Competition, 1st Prize; Foxes' Retreat Summer Solstice Writing Competition, 3rd Prize

Battenberg, Bats & Bright Romance

 I've always rather liked Battenberg cake, a peculiarly British confection made from alternating squares in pink and yellow, the whole surrounded by yellow marzipan. Heart attack on a plate? Perhaps, but like all treats it's a jolly splendid one, in moderation. 

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

From my writer's notebook I see that Battenberg cake was created for a royal wedding over a century ago, when the late Duke of Edinburgh's grandmother married Prince Louis of Battenberg. Apparently the sponge featured 9 panels at that time, but was simplified to four panels in the 1930s when bakeries began mass-production.

It's had a sudden resurgence in popularity of late, with stylish versions in pink and green, posh-looking slices in lemon and poppy seed and even a Blue Battenberg 'just because'. My own favourites are  the batty Halloween offerings, the more lurid the better. 

What a strange nation we are.

Glorious Halloween Battenberg by Sprinklebakes.com

I've a voracious appetite for reading. I read books on London history, baking, wildlife, oddities, peculiarities, health and spirituality of every kind. In our family the wide-ranging spirituality section of the bookshop has, for some inexplicable reason, been known simply as 'Shamanism' for years. When we enter a large bookshop and split up for our individual fave rave shelves, we've always agreed to 'meet you in Shamanism'. 

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

My mother was, famously, once propositioned by a ritual magician in 'Shamanism'.  He offered to take her, without benefit of either of their physical bodies, back to his seminar in South London, just to show that he could. She refused, apparently, not so much because she doubted she could do it (intrepid sort of woman, my mother), but because, she said, 'it would have meant 'going south of the river' which as a North Londoner, would have been quite out of the question.

Photo by Shutterstock.com

 In addition to non-fiction I devour fiction books. All types of fiction book. Not without discrimination, but without prejudice against any particular genre. This week the Sunday Times published its much-awaited 'Best Books of 2021, in every genre' list. Amazingly, it excluded the genre 'Romantic Fiction'. Apparently, in the year 2021 it's still acceptable to enjoy, even venerate, books that examine, depict and delight in murder or despair but not those that depict a love story. 

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

I just don't understand it. Milly Johnson sold 7000+ books in the week her genre was not featured at all by the Sunday Times, yet the British Heart Foundation has a 'Romance Stand' prominently displayed in every bookshop. The manager of my local shop told me: 'People like it - so it makes money. You have to know what sells when you run a charity shop.'

The fact is, best-sellers remain the financial backbone of the publishing industry. Learned dictionaries on Jazz Music do not bring in sufficiently large revenues, nor does the latest, beautifully written bildunsgroman - at least not on its own. I know this, having worked in publishing, and been a proud member of the editorial team on both. 

Well, in a few short days now the Winter Solstice will be with us and with that moment of stillness, celebrations of Yule, of Christmas and other winter festivals of choice. 

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Wishing all of you the very best winter festival in these troubled times.

Count your age by friends, not years

Count your life by smiles, not tears

John Lennon 1940-1980

Fancy a little love story set in WWII? To download a copy of my best-selling Christmas tale, 'I Remember Very Well'  - set in London's East End - and a dozen other Christmas stories set in WWII, please go here 

'I Remember Very Well'

(free on Amazon until 6 January 2022):

'I Remember Very Well'

Live From Staffordshire (on Zoom)

Who would have thought that a year after Lockdown we would still be in it? 

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Still in Lockdown, Human?

We've had some easements, true, but in essence, I am writing this from home in London, with currently 127,000 deaths in the UK. A tragedy to 127,000 families, naturally - but as with war and other tragedies, there is incidental progress in science and technology - new treatments for acute respiratory illness, the painstaking work to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, the development of every possible kind of face mask and even a much more user-friendly form of video-link software called Zoom.

Photo by Shutterstock

As a Clerk of the Court I used the video-link only for vulnerable witnesses before 2020, but now it's routine in courts all over the land. I also attend classes in literature and creative workshops on Zoom. This week I got out my writer's notebook read from my short story, 'I Remember Very Well' at a World Book Day event hosted by Staffordshire Poet Laureate, Mel Wardle Woodend and her adorable guinea pig, Scruffy (though Scruffy kept clear of the camera on this occasion).

World Book Day Event Live From Staffordshire

It was an inspiring 'Meet the Authors' event, in which poets and novelists read from their published work to an attentive audience.  In the day job I regularly commanded the entire court to 'All Rise' and read the charge directly to the accused's face, but this was different, somehow, and a tad nerve-wracking. Still, it was a great night; poems and fiction extracts that were vibrant, contemporary, poignant and mystical. 

'I Remember Very Well' is a historical fiction piece set in WWII (yes, controversial to call any time within living memory 'historical' I know; but I subscribe to the view that if it's a time that's gone, then it has a historical perspective).

My story is set partly in London's East End and partly in wartime France; it was published as one of an anthology 'Christmas Wartime Tales' (seasonal, you would think, but these short stories are varied and fascinating, and the volume still popular with readers). I'm now working on a series.  

Photo by Shutterstock

To download a copy of 'I Remember Very Well'  and a dozen other short stories set in WWII, please go here: 

'I Remember Very Well'

Jennifer Pittam has been published in: Aquarist & Pondkeeper, Astrology Monthly, Cosmopolitan, Ether Books, People's Friend, Prediction Magazine, Romany Routes, The Lady.

Competitions won: Coast to Coast Short Story Competition, 2nd Prize; Writers' Village Flash Fiction Competition, 1st Prize.

The Bug From Hell - June 2020

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Masks on Public Transport, June 2020

So early in February I spent a weekend with my father, who had recently been in hospital with a strange virus that we came to know as 'The Bug From Hell.' Like a kind of influenza, it seemed to have no runny nose or other cold symptoms, but jumped straight from high temperature, via loss of taste and sense of smell, to a barking cough and the most severe chest infection within 10 days. After a short, concerning period in hospital, he threw off the bronchitis. Feeling well but with an ominous scratchy cough, I left him and flew to Belfast for a long court case.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam
My Last 'Normal' Picture before Lockdown

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

The River Lagan, Belfast - View from my Bedroom Window

How strange it seems, 12 weeks later in #Lockdown, to be working as a Clerk of the Court from my front room in London, hearing bail applications on Zoom instead of travelling all over the British Isles for work. How utterly indescribable that as I write, 41,000 British lives have been lost (that we know of) to a virus no-one had heard of before the Christmas holiday.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Snowdrops Emerge During my Long Court Case

My trip to Belfast was long and drawn out because that was the nature of the court case. The days when court rose early, allowed me, at first, to seek my bed as I grew more and more sick, merged into those when, still untested but gradually recovering, I explored that beautiful city.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam
The Murals ~ A Feature of Belfast City

From the day, several years ago, that I started work as a Clerk of the Court and knew that my specific role would take me all over Britain, I resolved that I would not look back on that period remembering airports, train stations, hotel bedrooms and nothing else. As soon as I check in I always ask for recommendations, things to do, places to see.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam
Depict or Conceal ~ A City's History & Grief

 In Belfast I discovered an app on my phone - 'every visitor's guide' which mentioned the Botanical Gardens, the City Hall and the Titanic Exhibition. After that, it suggested, I should 'take a wander' through the streets to look at the City's famous murals.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam
The 'Irish Language' Mural

It was certainly a privilege to wander first around the obvious tourist spots but the murals? Barely 40 years ago, Belfast was a city engulfed by a brutal civil war. That's only half as long ago as World War II. Like many Londoners I have only to go back three generations to reach my immigrant Irish, Scots and Welsh ancestors. I have the stories my grandparents told me, passed to them by their own grandparents. Practically within living memory then. Making a sideshow out of the misery of others, especially when I have the family stories for added poignancy, does not sit well with me at the best of times.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam
The Loyalist 

Still, with advice and directions from a kindly  and knowledgeable court transcriber, I did take camera and writers' notebook and go, respectfully I trust, to see some of the pictures - stunning, heart-breaking, beautifully executed. 

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

The Crown Bar ~ Once at the Centre of the Troubles

Which brings me to the artwork that's been springing up all over Britain during the Corona Virus Pandemic - the ubiquitous rainbow.  Rainbow pictures originated in Italy, the first country outside China to be hit, in a most devastating way, by the virus. A spontaneous sign of hope, they were accompanied by the slogan 'andra tutto benne' (everything will be all right). For whatever reason, the idea caught on, and spread to the US, Canada, Spain and here in Britain with amazing speed. They're everywhere now, and very pretty they are. But the scars of Covid19 are likely to be deep, and wide. Will the rainbows be enough? 

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

The Ubiquitous 'Stay Well, Stay Safe' Motto 

It's great to stay positive, but who knows what the hidden casualties of the Corona Virus pandemic will be.  JoJo Thomas drew this to our attention in one of her superb creative writing workshops this Sunday (Zoom, naturally).  She finished with this great quote , which I've been using as my creative mantra all week:

Don't bend;

Don't water it down; 

Don't try to make it logical; 

Don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. 

Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Franz Kafka 1883-1924

To find out more about JoJo Thomas's Creative Writing Workshops go here:

https://www.facebook.com/lessthinkingmorewriting/

Jennifer Pittam has been published in: Aquarist & Pondkeeper, Astrology Monthly, Cosmopolitan, Ether Books, People's Friend, Prediction Magazine, Romany Routes, The Lady.

Competitions won: Coast to Coast Short Story Competition, 2nd Prize; Writers' Village Flash Fiction Competition, 1st Prize.

Monsters From the Deep

So my Creativity Course got off to a roaring start and the first thing we have to do is learn to write 'Morning Pages'.  Writing Morning Pages is a technique in which you empty the subconscious, sort of vomit it onto the page, at least once a day. Preferably you do it first thing in the morning, without thinking, judging or editing your work.  It's not a new idea - one wonders whether artists and writers have been at something similar since the first troubador hiked his wares at the castle gate.

Since the first troubadour...

There are various famous works one could learn from - the journals of Virginia Woolf, to name but one, and Dorothea Brande's brilliant classic 'Becoming A Writer'. Out of print now and hellishly expensive, it's still worth looking out for. DB gives those wonderful pep talks so redolent of old black and white movies. "If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, give up writing. Your resistance is actually greater than your desire to write." Superb, no doubt spoken with a cut-glass accent, it almost makes one feel like a grown up.

Dear, Dear Dorothea...

 Natalie Goldberg also gives some great advice about writing practice, very Zen, and I refer to 'Wild Mind' constantly, a decade after buying it. However, in the year 2013, when artists talk of 'doing their pages', they usually mean, doing their pages a la Julia Cameron.

For the next 16 weeks it's Julia's way of doing pages that I shall be sticking with, day in, day out, or stand up and explain at the weekly 'Check In.'

After working my way slowly through the larder and chomping everything that's not nailed down, I finally get to it, scribbling all the dismal, unfulfilled truths about my writing and my writing past, all the unfinished works, the plummeting self confidence, the 'Monsters from the Deep' who said, or thought foul things. The ones that looked at me in some awful way, or so I believed at the time. It doesn't feel good to get it out there. I was raised in the 'Keep Calm and Don't Mention a Thing' school of optimism. It's hard to believe, right now that in 112 days my creativity will be as high as one of those old Barage Balloons you see in Foyle's War. But, as the man himself would say, with that wry and rather sexy smile, 'We'll see.'

Monsters from the Deep

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices 

Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-1892

Birmingham, Oscar Wilde & Nana's Pure Filth

This week I've been in Birmingham for a huge court case.  For those unfamiliar with Britain, Birmingham is a city in what we call the Midlands - quite literally, the middle part, geographically, of the British Isles.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

The view from my hotel was tranquil and uplifting, unlike the court case which was gruelling and difficult to listen to. Safeguarding my own mental health, I took my writer's notebook to the Birmingham Museum of Art. Here I learned far too much about the punishing air-raids of World War II, when the city was reduced to rubble by enemy bombing.

Photo by Shutterstock.com

Birmingham Blitz, WWII

 It was very moving to see the black and white photos of the civilian population, who continued to work and maintain the country when their homes and businesses had gone. Many were mothers, left at home whilst husbands and sons served in the armed forces. As always in war, the civilian population in  the enemy country suffered in exactly the same way, as people are doing in war-torn countries today.

Photo by Shutterstock.com

Mothers & Air Raid Wardens, both...

Once I'd thoroughly depressed myself and could read no more sad history of heartbreak and valour, I came, quite suddenly, upon this glorious statue of the Archangel Lucifer.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Archangel Lucifer, the Bringer of Light

Lucifer was referred to in the book of Isiah, known as the bringer of light and most beautiful of all the angels. The sculptor, Jacob Epstein, was a Jewish refugee and had a cottage in my own part of the world, Epping Forest. Epping Forest has many glorious, ancient oaks and gnarled hornbeams.  I was fascinated to learn that he used an entire tree, one that had been brought down in a storm, to create the first impression of this glorious bronze which stands at least 20' or 7 metres high.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Hornbeam Trees, Epping Forest 

Epstein gifted the statue to the people of Birmingham in 1947, when virtually the entire city had been reduced to junk. Epstein was a controversial character, like so many artists of genius. Most of his greatest works were both loved and hated when they were first revealed. Statues of classical figures had always been carefully posed, standing with their private parts discreetly concealed with drapery or a fig leaf, before Epstein. Not only did he create massive artworks that were anatomically explicit, but he had them leaping around or flying, displaying their bits with abandon.

Photo by Shutterstock.com

Bits on Display

An anonymous benefactor paid Epstein £2000, a fortune at that time, to carve a tribute for the tomb of Oscar Wilde, to be erected beside the chaste crosses and simple stones in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Almost immediately, the French police rushed to to drape a tarpaulin over the offending item, which was not that large compared with its owner, but certainly considered a danger to the crowds looking up. My Nana, viewing it on her first holiday abroad famously reported, 'well, it IS pure filth dear'.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Oscar Wilde's Tomb at Pere Lachaise

The Archangel Lucifer may be filth, or at least well-endowed, but for me it's a truly glorious work of art and I completely understood, as I returned evening after evening, why the people of Birmingham had welcomed that particular bad boy into their hearts.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Epstein's Archangel Lucifer, Back View 

Returning, exhausted, on the train home I dozed and, in the early evening, woke up to a glorious sunset and a huge murmuration of starlings. Starlings are a common bird in the UK - black plumage, bright eyes, large communities. In autumn time they are joined, rather mysteriously by European cousins and huge numbers can be seen, swirling in bilingual delight, on the wild Fens in middle Britain.

Photo by Shutterstock.com

No-one knows exactly why they do it - some scientists claim it's a defence mechanism against birds of prey. Doesn't quite wash with me - there's something, moving, enthralling and I might say, mildly scary about a murmuration comprising many thousands. Pity the poor red kite that tried to tangle with that lot - maybe they just do it for the joy of living. How about that...

'To live is the rarest thing in the world' 

Oscar Wilde 1854-1900

Jennifer Pittam has been published in: Aquarist & Pondkeeper, Astrology Monthly, Cosmopolitan,  Ether Books, People's Friend, Prediction Magazine, Romany Routes, The Lady. 

Competitions won: Coast to Coast Short Story Competition, 2nd Prize; Writers' Village Flash Fiction Competition, 1st Prize.

Down by the Lost River Effra

Kennington's Gorgeous Bats

It's been a glorious week in London, just as late spring 'should' be. By contrast, there are ghastly things looming large in the world, and a fair percentage rock up in my courtroom. The  lunch break is my sanity check, and I  head to Kennington Park bearing salad box and writer's notebook. Stress  falls away - thank the Lord for riotous flower beds, sculpted lawns and centuries-old London Plane trees.

The Sculpted Lawns and Ancient Trees
Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Kennington Park  was common land for hundreds of years. It's first recorded officially in the 1600s. There were village settlements, semi-wild forest and the River Effra, a proud Celtic tributary of the River Thames. The first Queen Elizabeth sailed her barge down the River Effra to Sir Walter Raleigh's Brixton home, but now, like both of them, the River Effra's six feet under the ground.

The Lost River Effra

I wonder whether Sarah Elston walked on the banks of the River Effra. Sarah was the last poor woman to be burned at the stake, in England.  She had murdered her husband and they consigned her to the flames, here in my beautiful park, charged with witchcraft and treason. History does not record what the husband had done to provoke her, but whatever it was, they wouldn't have burned him for it, of that we can be sure.

Sarah Elston's Memorial Garden
Photo by Jennifer Pittam

I'm lucky to live in the 21st century - albeit in a country where I won't be pilloried or burned at the stake, where my body is my own and my choice of religion likewise. I work on my novel, drafting a few plot points before I have to return to the world of witnesses, legal bundles and oath statements.  Very often I'm joined by a chittering squirrel or, in late afternoon, a family of bats who circle me with eery accuracy and total silence before returning to their roost. Perhaps they too are haunted by London's Lost River Effra.

When the wind blows

The quiet things speak

Some whisper, some clang 

Some squeak.

When the wind goes - 

suddenly

then,

the quiet things 

are quiet again.

Lilian Moore 1909 - 2004

Jennifer Pittam has been published in: Aquarist & Pondkeeper, Astrology Monthly, Cosmopolitan,  Ether Books, People's Friend, Prediction Magazine, Romany Routes, The Lady. 

Competitions won: Coast to Coast Short Story Competition, 2nd Prize; Writers' Village Flash Fiction Competition, 1st Prize.