Jennifer Pittam

A Toilet of a Year This has been a W.C. of a year. Battling with the anguish of bereavement and supporting my father through two operations, I find it tough to get back to writing. People tell me to 'pull myself together' but have bugger all idea how I might go about it. Still, there is a gem of truth in those old wives' tales. This week I pull myself together in three ways; 1) sign up for a creative writing workshop 2) start a fresh, new course and 3) win a prize for a piece of flash fiction. In a literary city like London there are loads of workshops available; large and noisy, intimate and searching, cosy and hilarious, stretching and expensive.  I choose one called 'Less Thinking More Writing'. It's run by JoJo Thomas on Sunday mornings. The atmosphere's creative and beautifully prepared, with fab fab home-made cakes and coffee. Delicious Homemade Cakes There is little critique. The extended a.m. session (4 hours for £40) is...

So on Thursday morning at dawn, my mother died.  My sister and I had received what we, for years, had termed 'the 5.30 am call'. It means, in our family, a cry for help from one of the tribe, delivered as 'early as decent'. In this instance the message was simple - 'If you want to see your mother alive, come now'. A Cry From One of the Tribe The experts say that bad news sinks into the human brain in three stages: disbelief, acceptance, fortification. So, for an hour or so we had this ludicrous disbelieving conversation in which we reasoned that we would probably arrive too late for our mother's departure and that, based on our kindly father's desire 'not to bother us' we probably should just wait until the funeral. Over hot tea and buttered toast, we came to our senses and pelted down the platform for the first train out of Paddington Station, London, to a destination in the far west of Britain. The First Train Out of Paddington ...

The Urge to Dignify Death After a death comes a funeral, pretty much anywhere in the world.The urge to dignify the passing somehow means that we try to despatch the departed loved one with a ritual. In Victorian times, certainly in London, it  took as long as possible and 'death-bed' scenes were strung out with weeping and wailing. There were specific words, rituals and keepsakes known as 'memento mori'. Unless you work in a funeral parlour or something, the language of death, arriving right slap in the  rawness of your grief, comes as an experience both surreal and funny. The first thing that happens, in Britain at any rate, is that your family doctor certifies that the recently departed is actually dead, and there's nothing suspicious about it. The Doctor's Jaunty Tie In our case, the family doctor had been calling daily throughout the final week of my mother's life. The visit was strangely similar to the day before's, except that he arrived wearing a ...

Out on a Jolly So now I'm trying the next tool from the Creativity Course - the Artist's Date. Most blocked creatives find this creative 'playtime' much harder than the 'work' of morning pages. The idea is that, quite simply, you take your artist self out on a date, just the two of you. You're not supposed to achieve anything, feel anything, or come back with a result. There are no rules; results are cumulative, random, serendipitous - a red London bus pops into your narrative three months hence. You forget to be depressed in the mornings, writubg for ten minutes in the cafe instead. You don't drink as much gin and and you've enough cash  for a Creative Writing workshop. That sort of result. No Rules I found the concept slightly creepy at first. Your 'inner artist' is  a child-like creature, and in the UK the term 'date' has a distinctly adult feel.  Taking my newly emergent artist child on a date sounded pervy, unti...

The Banker Pub On a gorgeous day in August I met my dear friend Janet for lunch in a rather nice pub called The Bankers. It overlooks the River Thames, very close to the Tower of London. So, after a prettily dressed salad and a glass of lightly chilled white wine  (at a price that would make your Auntie scream), we nattered on about families, funerals and fallopian tubes. Then we strolled over to view the latest artwork. It was a sculpture of ceramic poppies that erupted out of a window of the Tower. We thought it very pretty, and a fitting tribute to the lost soldiers of World War I.  What we didn't realise at the time was that the poppy installation wasn't finished. Day by day, week by week, month by relentless month, a team of 8,000 volunteers have planted 888,246 beautifully crafted flowers, one for each life lost during those years in the trenches, 1914-1918.  The Poppies, August 2014 This morning I returned to the City of London in the early morning and s...

Dawn on the River Thames, A Week In  A week into Morning Pages and I find I rise earlier and see the dawn more often. My Morning Pages are already less bitter and less whiney. Of course, part of the point of writing Morning Pages is to free the creative channels of bitterness and whining. It's like a morning shower for the creative consciousness. It doesn't  matter one jot whether the mess on the page turns out to be vaguely readable or thoroughly vile. The point is to apply backside to seat and do them each day. Three pages is the recommended stretch, but I wonder whether each writer finds their own best length. The point is, it should be slightly more than you want to do. Keep going, no punctuation, no editing, be specific, allow the monsters to surface, then drive right on. The Monsters Drive Right On Having managed, some days with difficulty, to keep Morning Pages going, I admit that that a strange, tentative freedom creeps into my creative work. I'v...

Good grief, what a week we've had here in London.  On the one hand, the final section of the last ever Harry Potter film premiered to riotous but peaceful success in theatre land. Fans young and not so young swarmed into the 'West End' of the city. They dressed up, they sat on the lions in Trafalgar Square and generally made no trouble at all. On the other, Wapping Station stands deserted in the wake of the 'News of the World' phone hacking scandal which grew daily. The senior staff were declared to be the 'No. 1 Priority', while 200 or so clerical  and portering staff in the paper's offices in Wapping lost their employment. Wapping's not a rich part of London - at one time it was the site of the great London shipping trade. Fortunes were made from trade and export then, but not by the local people. They're not likely to prosper out of the demise of a newspaper empire either. That's before we even start to consider the victims of this alleged...

So, Twitter's alive with the news of Baroness Thatcher's funeral, and the route's announced. It's  passing within five minutes' walk of our favourite writers' haunt, The Bear & Staff pub in Charing Cross Road. Rob tweets. The Bear & Staff 'Fancy a cheeky one, group?' We tweet back that a 'cheeky one' ( London slang for an unplanned drink or indeed, any short burst of illicit activity) could be ideal use of this beautiful spring morning. We don't call in at the pub - 11.00 am is a bit early even for us - but station ourselves in the coffee shop on Trafalgar Square, by St Martin's Church. Waiting to Watch Baroness Thatcher's Funeral We chat about the  trouble ahead - Margaret Thatcher was a Prime Minister who divided the nation, inspiring adulation from some and from others, bitter hatred. A gaggle of protesters crowds into our coffee shop. They are bullied by their  massive banner, which refuses to lean neatly against the...