I still think of myself as a regular blogger but how easy it is to let things slide! I’ve had a few emails recently from friends worried or puzzled by my silence – one arrived yesterday, in fact, from a friend who used to like the photographs as it enabled her to ‘picture you where you are’. I recognise that desire to keep track of those we love and wish I were more like Raymond, who has managed to sustain his morning habit of letter-writing – real letters – into the 21st century. Last month my son Jack ran his first half marathon, raising over £1,000 for Parkinson’s UK. Keen to offer parental support, I downloaded a tracker app which enabled me to follow his progress round the course. It didn’t really help. Whilst I could watch on my phone his little symbol inching its way along in the intervals between crashes (the app not the runner), despite my scampering I managed to miss him at all of the five or six instances when he should have been plodding past. I even missed the finish. Somehow, between creaking technology and ageing brain, the tracking failed. Or perhaps, at each key moment, I was locked into virtual reality instead of the ‘real’ thing. Anyway, away from the Royal Parks 13.1 miles, there is nothing significant behind my absence, only the way that life has of getting in the way.
My world view has altered, though. After years of banging on about houses – the one I couldn’t sell in Cumbria and the Cambridge one I really couldn’t afford even though I spent several very happy years there – as if by magic I have been ‘translated’. Still, no ass’s ears here: my extraordinary good fortune has delivered me to the top floor of a block of flats around the corner from the Albert Street house. So, new lamps for old: and indeed, the new place is full of light. Smaller, but more space; both a room of my own, and a room with a view. Views, actually: from the kitchen table where I work, I can see past the pines where I think the magpies nest to the tops of the buses moving along Gilbert Road. One regular visitor, an exotic thug of a jay, has just flown past. The other balcony, at right angles, looks out across Victoria Road to the tops of King’s, John’s and the University Library – rather more than the tops now that the trees are de-leafing into autumn. The development stands on the site of the old Cambridge City Football Ground where, in one of those satisfying coincidences, on a chilly afternoon some years ago Andy and I watched Jack play in a charity match. Curiously, each flat comes with a brass-plated ‘Thunderer’ whistle in a glass case, a memento of the last game the club played on its Milton Road Ground in April 2013 and of the ‘lost sound’ of the crowd. Our whistles are to remain silent, the accompanying notes tell us, save only for the Saturday closest to the April anniversary each year, when they may be blown once during the 90 minute afternoon slot, before being returned to their boxes.
You might think my writing has been silent in sympathy. For sure it hasn’t taken flight with the rest of me, remaining for much of the time fairly bogged down, or at least that’s how it has felt. In fact the spring began with the news that The Station Master, an exploration of our responses to the refugee crisis, had won Adventures in Fiction’s Spotlight First Novel competition. The prize? A full manuscript appraisal – exactly what I needed at exactly the right moment – except that I had let myself believe that the novel was further forward, more nearly finished than it was. My amazing appraiser, Marion Urch, helped me to stand back for a long hard look at what was needed to translate the book from a manuscript ‘rich with themes, thoughts and ideas’ (elsewhere she suggested I had the ‘bare bones’ of a book!) into a ‘wonderful’ novel. Together we developed a series of tasks designed to develop the narrative and characters more fully: essential work, although at the time I felt as though I’d been put on hold – or even on rewind. The most frustrating part of the process, albeit the most crucial for a sharp focus, was the premise, during which Marion became my self-styled ‘tormentor’, returning all my best efforts as not quite good enough. I’m immensely grateful for her insight and her persistence. The results (so far) can be seen on the profiles section of the Adventures in Fiction website. For the rest, I’m somewhere deep in rewriting territory, with a clearer sense of where I’m heading and two exciting new contacts. Dimiter Georgiev of Neophron Tours is on board to help me experience migration in the bird world, especially with regard to raptors, on a visit to Bulgaria in autumn 2018. And Chris Bailey, author of Railways of Bulgaria, has kindly agreed to be my consultant on local and technical matters. I know my timing isn’t great – obviously I would have preferred the book to be available to readers at the height of the recent crisis – but whilst the geographies may have shifted, the issue is undoubtedly an enduring one.
For the tango and Parkinson’s book, it’s a different story: not exactly airborne, but beginning to shake out its wings perhaps. Since we began putting it together six years ago, it’s undergone several changes and a series of different titles. The most recent version, Parkinson’s & the Tango Effect, documents the impact of the Argentine tango habit on my Parkinson’s over the course of a year. A slimmer volume, it still has contributions from John and Ellie, key partners in my experience of writing and dancing tango in Cambridge, as well as outlining the relevant research. I believe – have always believed – that it will prove interesting reading for tango dancers and people with Parkinson’s alike, as well as carers, family and friends and most particularly those with an interest in the therapeutic potential of dance and hence makes a valuable contribution to the debate. The difficulties of securing mainstream publication, however, led me to approach the crowd-funding publisher Unbound and I am delighted to report that they like the book and I am currently waiting for costings. It’s going to be quite a challenge to raise the funding but I’m keen to get started and very excited indeed to think that, in a year or two, Parkinson’s & the Tango Effect might be on your bookshelves.
The Parkinson’s itself has demanded more attention during the last year or so, the meds working less efficiently and the side effects more troublesome even with regular doses of the tango medicine. Fortunately I was deemed to be a good candidate for Deep Brain Stimulation and after some lengthy hoop-jumping the operation was scheduled for mid-October. Six hours of surgery (cutting edge?), a full head shave, electrodes planted, battery inserted, some very tidy stitching and an impressive scar became in surgeon-speak an ‘uneventful procedure’ on my discharge notes. Everything has healed nicely and I’m feeling pretty good though as yet not much has changed. At present I’m still between worlds, waiting for my poor old brain to settle down and taking the medication as usual, before my ‘switch on’ in a couple of weeks. Whilst DBS won’t cure the disease or reverse its progress, if it works it should maintain me as I am at best, rather than with the current peaks and troughs. I should also be able to reduce the drugs and hence the side effects. Potentially life-changing is what they say. Meanwhile, I’m massively grateful: to the NHS, of course, as always, to the neurology and neurosurgery teams at Addenbrookes, and to all those who have raised funds for Parkinson’s research. I’m also surprised not to be missing my mop of blonde curls. In fact, I’m rather enjoying my new svelte profile and contemplating making it a permanent feature although again my timing’s questionable, given the season.
My mum is uppermost in my mind as I head off to the Botanics in search of the autumn colours she loved so much. As the month begins with the Day of the Dead, I’m in reflective mode, playing through my pile of requiem masses, lighting a candle or two and remembering not just the dead but those I haven’t seen for a while. It’s my first visit to the Garden for some months and it’s quite strange to reacquaint myself with the exact spot where individual stories in Writing the Garden were born. Here is the bench where Walter sat and waited in ‘Pigeons’; here the cottage which I gifted with an unlikely squatter for 'Inside'. I’m also delighted to bump into my first friend at the Botanics. ‘It’s the same,’ Marek says, ‘all same.’ In fact, though he still works in the café, since we last met he has learnt to drive, bought a car, had a holiday in Malta and moved in with his girlfriend. When I reach the Brookside Gate, I come upon a ‘farewell’ to the black walnut, with a section of the trunk on display. Juglans nigra, one of the garden’s oldest trees, was planted in 1846 and grew to almost 25 metres in height before it succumbed to honey fungus and had to be felled. The word puts me in mind of Hopkins’ lament for his beloved Binsey Poplars, ‘all felled’ and his poignant certainty that ‘After-comers cannot guess the beauty been’. As the nights lengthen and we plummet towards winter, it feels right to keep track of our losses and be thankful for what we have, not least those autumn colours.
This year's Royal Parks Half Marathon was the 10th, and is already taking applications for next year.
Railways of Bulgaria by Chris Bailey was published by Mainline and Maritime Ltd in 2016. Unfortunately it is now out of print but I understand Chris is working on a second edition.
All photographs were taken in Cambridge University Botanic Garden on the morning of 5th November.
Railways of Bulgaria by Chris Bailey was published by Mainline and Maritime Ltd in 2016. Unfortunately it is now out of print but I understand Chris is working on a second edition.
All photographs were taken in Cambridge University Botanic Garden on the morning of 5th November.
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