Wandering

 

I don't feel like writing at the moment, not even - as must have become obvious - on the blog. I'm quite content just wandering, pottering, faffing about. And very lucky, it has to be said, that I am able to do just that when I want to.

 

In Bonnieux the other day, I caught sight of this magnificent wisteria behind a gate, through an archway. It looked intriguing so I stopped. For a brief moment I wondered who lived in the house and how long that bottle had been there in the courtyard. Another time, I might have considered whether it might make a setting for a scene in a novel, but I just took a photo because it was pretty and left it there.

 

Have I run out of steam? Does there come a time when a writer feels there's no more to say for a while? A few too many crass online reviews? "Meh." "No. Just no." "This book uses words that are literally not in the dictionary." (At least that one gave us a laugh.) I don't think it's anything to do with that. I'm someone who believes passionately in freedom of expression, and will defend to the end the right of reviewers to be mean if that's how they feel. There are enough other readers who do like my novels, which redresses the balance.

 

I've long thought that the reason for writing and reading novels is to try to make sense of the world. Each of my novels has contained some personal issue that I've been grappling with, though usually this has not become apparent, even to me, until some time afterwards. There's no equivalence in the plot. The manifestation is more like those dreams of places and people that don't seem to look like they do in life.

 

But in the case of the last novel, issues of identity and loss were all too close to the surface as I was struggling to write it. There was no time to process my emotions. They were raw and real and ever-present as I wrote through the winter that saw both my parents pass away within four months of each other. Over the book, the word "deadline" hung with a bitter, macabre irony.

 

Writing this now, I think I've realised what my silence is saying. "Give me a break."

Wisteria and shutters

            The house slumbered behind mauve shutters…

Although I’ve always thought the colour of the shutters on our property was grey-lavender, one of the traditional Provençal shades, it’s only now in heady springtime that I see it’s also a match for the rampant wisteria. The delicate mauve makes such a pretty counterpoint to the faded grey stones of the house and surrounding walls it seems as though it’s all part of the natural landscape.

When all the building work is finished, we’ll have to repaint the shutters and the campaign has already started to find the paint to recreate the exact hue. Our first experiments have been in “Figue Matte” (Matt Fig), which is yet another variation on a theme, and although it looks a little dark now, we're sure it will weather to the original.

There comes a moment in spring when plants and trees surge and become blowsy in the renewed heat and light, and so it is here. In our courtyard, the wisteria tangles with the branches of the olive tree and the two dance together against welcome blue skies. There’s a persistent hum as bees busy themselves in the blossoms. It isn’t always like this:

       

               This part of Provence is a country of contrasts: the bone-biting cold; the golden days of heat and the violent storms; sweetness of the soft perfumes that pulse in the sun and the treacherous changes of mood. The wind is the pacemaker of the day’s rhythms, from the summer zephyrs that sustain the spirit to the savage howling of the mistral.

                                                          From The Lantern

But spring is here now, and with it the sudden bursts of heat that presage summer. Wild flowers are jumping up from the grass, and we might even find marsh orchids again, alongside the columbine and Jacob’s ladder.
Time to put a table outside and have a lovely lunch of white asparagus and vinaigrette, and the freshest goat's cheese.