Celebrations!
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: February 19, 2012
- In: drama | Edinburgh
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It’s nice to be on a winning team once in a while so I really enjoyed seeing the director of our production of ‘Sparkleshark’ accept two awards last night at the one act play festival (see also previous post). It was particularly good for the props team to hear the set being praised and to know that our efforts in collecting sweetie wrappers, old newspapers and crisp packets had not been in vain! We also managed to get through to the next round of the competition so the whole thing will have to be done all over again at the end of March.
I suppose in some ways the whole idea of theatre productions competing against each other is rather silly, just as I always find literary prizes a bit pointless. It’s hard to accept that there can possibly be objective criteria for judging these things, since people’s tastes vary such a lot. There are technical issues, of course, but I don’t think winning the Booker prize really depends on a writer’s use of commas or whether there’s a typo on page 157. In both cases the main criterion is probably something fuzzy, such as whether the writer or director brought the whole thing to life. In the case of ‘Sparkleshark’ this was definitely a factor.
A Three Cat Night
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: February 18, 2012
- In: cats | drama
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I wasn’t sure why there were three cats on my bed until I got up this morning and saw the words ‘Met Office issues snow warning’ on the front page of the BBC news website. I quite often have two cats on the bed, one at my head and one at my feet, but when I woke up in the night I found the third one had sneaked in between my feet and the other cat. Sometimes when there are three of them, one will lie across my legs so that when I wake up I think for a moment I’ve become paralysed in the night, but on this occasion I had just been pushed over to the edge of the mattress.
It’s a lovely day so far with sunshine and blue skies. The wind is slightly chillier than I would like, but it’s a sort of bracing day when ideally I would be walking along a beach or the top of a cliff somewhere by the sea. Of course in real life I’m planning an exciting trip to the library and Sainsbury’s this morning, then to a technical rehearsal this afternoon and a performance of ‘Sparkleshark’ in the Scottish Community Drama Association competition this evening. Last weekend we had to practise setting up the stage in 10 minutes and clearing it in 5. As the props include all sort of odd bits of rubbish (literally) we thought it would be impossible to clear in 5 minutes, but in fact we did it in less than 2. My main contribution to the props this time was to persuade my work colleagues to eat a jar of wrapped sweets and leave the wrappers in the jar – something they turned out to be really good at!
Jacques
the weekend starts…
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: February 11, 2012
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For once I am not going to complain about the weather here in Edinburgh, because there’s really nothing to say about it. We have missed out on the snow and ice this time round. The day is grey but just about warm enough for me to leave the conservatory door open for a while to let the cats go in and out. As I write this I have just looked up and noticed that one of them, Jacques, isn’t even outdoors but sitting at my son’s bedroom window, surveying the scene. A wall behind our house partly collapsed one day during the week and because Jacques is always very interested in what’s going on, he’s probably watching to see if any more of it falls down. In fact I have unworthy suspicions about the part he played in causing it to collapse! Especially as he’s been putting on weight just lately.
The past few days have been exciting as we watch our short story collection moving up the ‘free chart’ on Amazon (see previous post). It’s definitely more fun and less stressful doing this kind of thing as a collaborative venture. The highest position it has reached so far, I think, is no.22 but we’re hoping to get it into the top 20.
Later today I’ll be going out to the theatre, and tomorrow I have to go to my theatre group to make sure I’m conversant with the way the set and props are organised for ‘Sparkleshark’, our entry in the local one-act play competition which takes place next weekend at St Serf’s Church in Edinburgh. On the one hand it would be nice to do well, on the other hand we have to do it all over again in the next round if we win! ‘Sparkleshark’ is a lovely one-act play and very enjoyable for everyone.
We’re also currently working on an Agatha Christie show, and one of my tasks for the weekend is to recruit set painters. The usual argument heated discussion has taken place about the choice of paint, but of course no-one is ever quite sure what it will look like until it’s built in the theatre, by which time it’s too late to do anything very much about it.
Back to the fifties
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: February 8, 2012
- In: NaNoWriMo | writing
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At some point I usually regret writing a novel set in the past – witness my historical novel; written in 2008 for NaNoWriMo, it has had at least three changes of title, varying amounts of Arthurian legend added and subtracted in the form of prologues, extra scenes, expanded scenes where Merlin is represented by a large dog that looks like a wolf… One day it could escape into the wild, so beware.
Somewhere in the middle of writing my short story ‘A Romantic Quest’, now available as part of the ‘Hearts and Arrows’ anthology just published on Amazon (go to http://tinyurl.com/7qslegs and have a look – it’s worth it just to admire the cover), I wondered if I had made a huge mistake in writing about the 1950s. Although I must admit to having experienced the 1950s at first hand, I found there were lots of everyday things I didn’t know about that period. When did most lifts/elevators stop having these heavy iron gates you had to pull across by hand? What sort of art was exhibited? And (perhaps most important of all) when did ice-cream come back into circulation after being banned in wartime Britain?
Note: the Hearts and Arrows anthology contains a variety of romantic stories by various writers, so it isn’t all my own work. It will be available free on promotion for the next few days as a pre-Valentine’s Day treat – make sure you check the price to make sure it is indeed free, since Amazon’s timings for starting the promotion may vary slightly.
Link to the book on amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/8ysl936
weather forecasting
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: February 4, 2012
- In: cats | drama | Edinburgh | writing
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We have an alternative method of predicting the weather around here: we study the behaviour of our cats. Based on watching their activities this morning, I will be quite surprised if we get snow here in Edinburgh. George in particular is very sensitive to the approach of snow, but today he has behaved fairly normally – though admittedly his standards of normality are a bit different from anyone else’s – by pausing for a couple of moments in the doorway to glance round and sniff the air suspiciously, then going out for a short while, then coming back in and curling up on the nearest bed. This is what he usually does in the mornings throughout the winter months, except that if we do have snow he misses out the ‘going out for a short while’ part and if it’s really cold, he avoids even going near the door in case he accidentally sets foot outside. As he has just gone out again for the second time today, I think snow is even less likely. But of course even a seasoned forecaster like George can be wrong on occasion!
If we get the rain that a human forecaster at the BBC has predicted, I can stay indoors with a clear conscience and edit more chapters of ‘Death at the Happiness Club’. It may be too early to say this but I think the story has started to make more sense now and I am quietly confident of being able to publish it one day.
In the mean-time I have contributed a new short story to an anthology for Valentine’s Day (more information to follow later). I didn’t feel nervous about it at the time I wrote it, but I did have a slight panic attack when I opened the file and started to read, since writing for Valentine’s Day is not really my forte and I was worried that my story would stand out as being utter nonsense compared to the others. I don’t think it is, but I still live in fear that if we get a review it will say something like ‘All the stories were fantastic apart from the one by Cecilia Peartree – what made her think she could write?’. This is similar to the feeling I had when I ventured on stage in a Fringe show a few years ago, and imagined the review saying ‘All the cast were brilliant except the woman in the purple coat - what on earth did she think she was doing there?’ Of course in reality I don’t think anyone would have noticed the woman in the purple coat as she had no lines (I can’t remember lines, as I know from my experience as a pirate in a version of ‘Treasure Island’ performed by our local youth group – don’t ask) and was completely focussed on the important task of not falling off the stage.
what to do with a long weekend…
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: January 28, 2012
- In: Edinburgh | lifestyle | writing
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No, this isn’t some sort of tourist guide that suggests things to do on a long weekend in Edinburgh. Though of course that would be an easy enough post to write since even at this time of year there’s lots to do here: go and see the pandas, visit Edinburgh Castle or one of the many other historic places in and around the city, spend some time in a museum or gallery,climb a hill if the weather is favourable… I must confess that someone who had never visited Scotland asked me recently why she should bother coming here – yes, the question was framed in just such an aggressive way – and I was taken by surprise, couldn’t think of any reason and replied by mumbling something about history. Obviously I need some PR lessons from the tourist board!
Anyway, I am on the second day of a long weekend – I wouldn’t usually choose to have one in January but I have a couple of days’ holiday to use up – and I am not planning to do any of these tourist things. Well, I might go for a walk later, either at the Zoo or somewhere nearby, but only if the temperature rises above -7C.
Instead this is the weekend for tidying things up and getting things done. A doctor’s appointment. Ringing the tax people. Deep-cleaning the conservatory because I seem to have inadvertently invited someone to the house – I usually avoid doing this because it makes me uneasily aware of the chaos I live in, which I can happily ignore for most of the time. Tidying up paperwork. Trying to get the director of a play to agree the colour for the set. Perhaps starting to set up a website for the local community centre.
And writing! I almost forgot. This makes it seem as if writing is something of an afterthought, to be fitted in around everything else. The truth is more complicated than that. I sometimes like to imagine how wonderful my life would be if only I had more time to write. What vast masterpieces I could produce or (more likely) how lengthy a series of quirky mysteries I could release. The truth is that my writing and the rest of my life depend on each other: without writing, I wouldn’t have an outlet for the creativity that is sometimes stifled by my day job, domestic tasks and committee work, and my life would seem very dreary and boring. Without these other things that I often grumble about, I wouldn’t have nearly so much material for my writing and it wouldn’t have that essential grounding in reality.
I don’t usually mention politics here on this blog, so I will just point out that I have ranted about the Scottish referendum on one of my other blogs (see link at right hand side to Sheila Perry Predicts Scotland’s Future’).
Through new eyes
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: January 21, 2012
- In: cats | Edinburgh | lifestyle | writing
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OK, I don’t really have new eyes – just new glasses. I’m quite impressed with myself for realising the varifocals didn’t work properly for reading, so this time I’ve got one pair of glasses for driving, computer work and easy reading, ie in good light with reasonable print size, and another pair (pink with little flowers but not too much like Dame Edna Everage) for computer work and all kinds of reading but not for driving. Of course the danger is that one of these days I will be driving along the main road towards work and wondering why everything looks so blurry, but I hope to avoid that by using my superhuman power of concentration while getting ready to go out in the morning. I’ll let you know how that goes, if I survive!
A wet and breezy morning in Edinburgh is turning into a sunny day with a blue sky. One of the cats is darting in and out, but another has still not forgotten that there were a few flakes of snow on Thursday and he hasn’t risked going out much since then. If I had time today I would go over to the Zoo for its Chinese weekend, but I’m actually going out to dinner - or possibly a late late lunch – this afternoon with my writers’ group, a spin-off from NaNoWriMo. I was at the Zoo last weekend and noticed they now have a Chinese arch near the Giant Panda enclosure. Presumably they’re holding this Chinese weekend to make the pandas feel at home. A joke that has circulated round Scotland is that there are now more Giant Pandas here than Conservative MPs.
The red folder mentioned in my previous post is now more or less full of my scribblings, and I really should have started to apply changes to my Word file by now. As usual I’m finding it harder to get motivated to do editing than to write the original novel. I can’t even complete the final part of the re-plotting until I’ve worked some of the changes into the earlier part of the novel. So this is the weekend when I am determined to make some headway with it. In self-defence I should say that I’ve been distracted by activities in my theatre group, where two plays are production at once. Just as well I’ve got over that stressful first week back at my day job! I’m even starting to think about summer holidays – but that’s another story.
Back into the groove, or is it a rut?
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: January 14, 2012
- In: lifestyle | work | writing
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I can’t really summarise my first week back at work, but at least I survived it. The worst part was finding out how quickly I got cross with someone who sent me an annoying email. I had hoped to reduce my stress levels this year! But apparently that’s not going to happen. Of course some would say that deciding to get cross with people is under my own control and I shouldn’t let annoying people get to me, but I think objectively some people are just more annoying than others and there isn’t anything to be done about it.
I can now report, for the benefit of anyone who has been worrying about the loose roof tile, that a builder sneaked round one day and fixed it while I was at work. Actually today is the first time I’ve seen it in daylight since it was mended. It doesn’t look very different but at least we can now sit in the conservatory without worrying that the slightest breeze will result in disaster. It’s quite chilly out here today, as my son has decided the heater is about to explode so we haven’t been using it. But I can always put on another cardigan, as we Scots are trained to do almost from birth.
I’m taking with me everywhere a red folder which contains the latest printed copy of ‘Death at the Happiness Club’ – already the text has almost disappeared under all the annotations. In some ways I find this reassuring. The basic story is still there somewhere but now I’ve started to tidy up people’s timelines, fill in some of the gaping plot holes and make sure people have motivations for everything they do. Sometimes I’ve known the solutions to these problems all along and just haven’t spelled them out for other people who don’t live inside my head to understand, but more often than not I have to work them out at this stage. After that I have to weave them into the novel, tucking in the loose ends so that it looks as if they have always been there.
Where has all the time gone?
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: January 7, 2012
- In: Edinburgh | writing
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Sunrise in Edinburgh
Nearly time to go back to work. How can I possibly have had 2 1/2 weeks away from it? It seems like no time at all since I had the final meeting of 2011 and skipped off gaily into the sunset without a care in the world.
The weather is now cold and calm, which is good news for us as we now have a large roof tile hanging over the conservatory roof like the sword of Damocles, and we are still waiting for a builder to come and secure it under what is laughingly known as ‘home emergency cover’. We had a lovely red sunrise yesterday which seemed ominous, but the day that followed wasn’t at all dramatic.
It’s been hard to get round to writing, probably because the days are so shapeless and I can easily while away a few hours in the morning sitting at my computer [stern editor's note: so that's where the time has gone!], do a little light housework, have some lunch, read a book, pop out to the shops etc. I often dream of retiring and being able to write all day, but of course that wouldn’t happen. However, I have forced myself to re-visit November’s NaNoWriMo novel and to try and sort out a few anomalies. When I write as fast as I did in November, timescales go out the window, and I lose track of details such as whether I’ve given someone a last name in a previous novel in the series, or how many times someone has been married. At the moment I’m wrestling with the fact that someone has to be at the murder scene at a certain time even though he or she is seen rushing towards it about fifteen minutes later – does he/she go away and come back again, and if so, why? was he/she never there in the first place? why did he/she go there anyway?
Happy New Year!
Posted by: mccallumogilvy on: January 3, 2012
Best wishes to all for the year 2012. I don’t think anyone would mind if it was a bit less ‘interesting’ than 2011.
We seem to be starting here in Edinburgh with a bang, ie more gales like the ones we had in December. Roads and bridges closed, trampolines blowing on to railway lines, all the features we are becoming used to – I still can’t quite get to grips with the idea of trampolines being so disruptive. That reminds me to say that ‘The Mountain and the Flood’ has finished its free run for the moment – I will announce future freebies here as they come along, but I should point out that Cecilia Peartree’s ‘Crime in the Community’ is on more or less permanent free download from Amazon, Smashwords and varios other outlets if anyone is short of reading material for their Kindle! (it seems unlikely at the moment though).
I’m not planning to spend all day online today, tempting though it is on a day like this, because I have a new computer to play with and I need to install some extra programs on it. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of setting up a new computer to distract me from urgent household tasks and from editing my latest novel! I’ll be trying to charge all the batteries up in case we have a power cut. I still have the new torch and thermos flask I bought in readiness for our last ‘hurricane’. Fortunately today is not the day we move the pantomime set out of the theatre – I haven’t forgotten last year when there was a human chain, a slippery fire escape and a blizzard involved in the move out.
