The final installment of a gripping saga of one writer writing things and being in a castle.
23 February 2004
FEAR OF HOT CHOCOLATE
Went to Edinburgh again today. This trip was a DREAM compared to the last one. First, left earlier. Caught bus immediately. Was in the city by 10:15. Had coffee at a fantastic place called the Black Medicine Coffee Co.. Trekked up along the royal mile to Edinburgh Castle. Castle is very castley. I am used to castles now. Audio tour served to remind me, yet again, how little I know about history. As I remember it, the tour went something like this:
“This is the outer castle wall, which was first built in 1086, and then again in 1123 and then again in 1346 and then again in 1532, just for fun. It was severely damaged in 1564 during the siege of Layoffme, at which time it was fortified, only to be knocked down again in the battle of Seriouslyquitit. James the VI of Scotland, also James the I of England, son of Mary Queen of Scots [this part may actually be right] ordered the construction of the final layer of the wall in 1653, because he thought ‘it could be a bit thicker.’”
When I returned, the movies I asked Trevor for had arrived. HOORAH! He has sent The Hulk, Bad Boyz II, and S.W.A.T. He understood the brief perfectly. I took my little stash back to my room before anyone could ask me what it’s in the box.*
25 February 2004
Before I say anything else, let me at least explain what “fear of hot chocolate” meant.
So I bought this container of hot chocolate and I plonked it down on the tea tray when I returned from Bonnyrigg on that grey afternoon. The chocolate was pretty well received, but the staff all seem to fear the chocolate or something, because they will never move it along with the tray. They take it off the tray and leave it on the tea table, so that after dinner I have to go upstairs and get it after dinner. Then they didn’t want to take it upstairs again on the tea tray, so they leave it in a variety of places around the downstairs area—the drawing room, the informal dining room, and most recently, on the ledge outside the kitchen, next to the bus schedule. I’m always trying to hunt it down, and they’re always figuring out ways to outsmart me.
An amazing change has come over me in the last few days. I came through that almost violent reaction I had to the place, the one that had me so despairing. Suddenly, I felt completely at home. I just clicked in. I notice it a lot on the Castle walk. The Castle walk is a looping path that begins on the side of the driveway then cuts down to the river and turns back the other way.
The first few days I was here, I ventured only a short way down this path then came back. I’ve only been doing the Castle walk completely for the last four days or so. The first time I did it, I was a mess. Really nervous. It’s the kind of thing that when you clap or make a noise, you hear things scurry all around you. My boots are very soft—they are in fact the reason I think I’ve seen the deer so many times. They don’t always hear me. I saw them on the walk the first time I did it all the way. The first few times I did it, I clapped and coughed and generally made a ridiculous amount of noise (technique developed during the famous “Little creatures of the forest” walk on the first trip to Edinburgh). Then the edge gradually wore off. Now, I do the Castle walk like I’m Jane Goodall or something. I creep along, stopping when I hear a noise. Of course, I’m looking for deer or ponies or rabbits, not giant orangutans or leopards.
I realize the fact that I can now walk through a marked path in the woods without vomiting from anxiety is not really that great of an accomplishment, but shut up.
In an unrelated story . . . Nigel was telling us all about how his friend called him one day and asked him if he wanted to come over to help tear down his shed. He said yes. He said they spent the day just bashing the thing apart with axes and hammers and that it was pretty much the best day ever.
I would like to destroy a shed sometime.
9:09 PM
I’m in the drawing room now, with my legs stretched out by the electric fire. Agatha and Nigel are trying to figure out when St. Crispin’s Day is. I wish Nigel would tell another good story like the one about the shed, but instead we are just going through what sound like holidays last celebrated in 1200, which no one should know.
I’m going back to my room to watch Bad Boyz II.
1 March 2004
Now that I’m on the downward slope, it’s all going very, very fast. I know that 9:59 this morning (which it is now) will quickly turn into 6:30 this evening, and then before I know it, I’ll have to make my final decision about my train, pack, settle my account, and leave.
Leaving is going to be strange. I’ve become extremely accustomed to being here. Coming down to the breakfast room, covered in its Victorian pictures of Scottish men in various tartans, to the long, thin table to have porridge, orange juice, and painfully strong coffee. Having my mornings to do things like what I’m doing now. Getting my little lunch container. Getting the tea at 4. Wrapping up at 6:30 or so to go down to poke at the fire, and then getting called to dinner. Sitting in the drawing room, feeling way too full, talking for a while, going up for my bath. Getting my clothes out of my wicker trunk for the next day.
I’ll have to take all these books (we all horde the books) back to the library. I’ll have to take down this pile of stuff that’s been in the left corner of my desk the entire time I’ve been here, and which I pretty much haven’t looked at. I’ll have to get out the suitcase that I stuck in the linen room on the night of the 11th and pretty much haven’t touched since, except once to look for a phone cord.
The disruption to my routine may kill me.
Anyway, I took some photos a few days ago. I seem to only take photos when it is overcast. I should take some today, because it is beautiful. But I won’t, because I am lazy. Also, I’m trying to remain focused.
In theory, I am going with Agatha and Petunia to Rosslyn Chapel today. It’s supposed to be one of the most amazing places around here. We’re going at 1:30, so I really need to get cracking. It’s now 10:30. So that’s three hours. Shall we chart my progress now? I think it’s down to that. I have to start keeping track. No more monkey business, boys and girls. I have to get this troublesome, coffee-stained, pencil-covered manuscript back into its big padded folder, along with the disk of new material. Can we do it? Yes, we can.
10:34 AM. Listening to birds. FOCUS.
10:36 AM Closed this, then opened it back up again. Woodpecker is at it again outside. Also, I smell horse out there. I don’t know how this is possible (even if the horses are out today, they are very far from my window), but I am telling you, I smell horse.
6:31 PM
I told you it would be 6:30 in no time.
I did work those three hours. Had my coffee, banana, and cereal bar. (Okay. And a chocolate covered biscuit that I rescued from yesterday’s leftovers on the tea tray. I stash an extra or two in my drawer if there are leftovers. There. I’ve admitted it.)
Agatha, Petunia, and I left for Rosslyn at 1:30 on the nose. I was working up until the last second and just had time to snag my coat and jog off. We went to Rosslyn chapel, which is amazing. It’s kind of the law that you have to go there if you stay at Hawthorden.***
This is Rosslyn Castle, which I think is a rentable landmark trust house.
There isn’t actually very much castle at all. Our castle is better. Our castle can beat up your castle.
2 March 2004 10:38 AM
This morning, Nigel offered to have me come along with him this morning along the lady walk, since I’d never been on it. I agreed. We left at 9:30 on the dot. So yes, I decided to go walking in the woods with a man with an axe.
It’s a good thing I went with him, because it’s the kind of thing that I NEVER would have done by myself. It’s amazing—but the stories are true. If you go down on the lady walk, you go down. Like right down the side of the slippery rock. It was aggressive walking, serious hiking. You can barely call it a path—there are path-like parts, but sometimes it’s just a little dent in the foliage, a few inches across. And when we went down to Wallace’s cave, it was just slippery, sloping stone “steps” that listed in the direction of the drop, so I think the chances were actually better than average that you could slip and go head-first over the edge. But we did it, and we went in. Not a lot to say about caves, except that they are cave-like. This one was supposed to have been able to hold 60 to 70 men. There were two main “rooms,” with “wings” on either side that we completely pitch black.
We came back up and continued until we got to a felled tree that blocks the path. Nigel has been chopping this tree in half, a little bit, every day. He said he’s never gone beyond it, and suggested I go and have a look while he did his ten minutes of chopping.
If I was ever going to get attacked by an angry badger, this would have been the time. I have never come closer to putting myself in the path of such a creature. Again, I did not see one. The only thing I saw was a pony in the pasture, high up on the opposite side.
When I got back, Nigel was chopping away. I noticed there was blood all over the handle of the axe. He cut the back of his hand at some point. This is nice. Nigel and I go out for a little walk with an axe, Nigel returns all covered in blood. That should keep the others quiet for a while.
Rose had made a cake for Agatha, since yesterday was Agatha’s 63rd birthday. (I didn’t have much dinner. It was quiche, which I attempted to eat with little success.**** But I did try. The pudding was small, compared to the usual pudding, and I was saying how happy I was that for once I wasn’t overstuffing myself. Then five minutes later, a whole other cake!)
We played Scrabble. I lost. No surprise there. I suck at Scrabble. Petunia thrashed us all with a 160 without breaking a sweat. Agatha and Nigel got 104. I stumbled in with 95. I hate Scrabble.***
4:54 PM
I’ve decided to change location. I’m down in the garden room now, trying to keep this little fire alive. I watched three deer from my window. They came down the hill and went down to the castle walk. The amazing thing was—I knew they were there. I was sitting in my room, and I heard a crackling on the leaves all the way on the hill across, and I knew. I have developed WOODLAND SENSES.
Poke, poke, poke the fire. This fire is not doing well. It’s steaming and smoking and generally dying.
5:06 PM
Oh, I’ve got it now. It takes a lot of effort to make things burn. Well, wet wood, anyway. When it really goes, it sounds like breaking glass. And it’s strange—it really makes you understand how the oxygen has a role, how fuel converts to heat, how you can’t poke it all the time . . . What I learned at Hawthorden.
Nice woody smell, too. I have become a good country girl. 6:08 PM
Have I been doing this for an hour? I smell like wood.
The fire can honestly be described as “roaring.” It is maybe the best fire we have ever had. I am not kidding. I have used half the basket and am exhausted from the effort, but this is one very serious fire. The others had better get down here soon to take a look at this. Nigel may be upset that I used up all the wood that probably took him forever to chop, but it is too late to think about that now.
3 March 2004
I spent all last night reading in the drawing room with Petunia and Agatha. It was quiet because Nigel was out having freshly-shot duck with one of his friends who lives nearby, and he ended up walking back from Rosewell in the dark, kind of drunk. He couldn’t figure out how to get back in and was ringing the bell. We heard it, and I went down to get him.
We had fruit and Greek yogurt for dessert, so I went down and stole us biscuits later on. When I switched on the kitchen light, the bulb exploded. Don’t tell me I don’t have the magic touch.
Tonight is Agatha’s last night, so we will be having our final dinner. We have to figure out what we are giving as gifts. I imagine that I may even start taking apart my room tonight, putting the things I won’t be needing into bags, taking apart my desk.
It’s hard to believe. I’ve almost done it. I made it to the almost-end.
I think I can hear Agatha packing in the room next to mine.
Some more photos:
Going into the Lady Walk. This key isn’t as cool as THIS KEY:
Now, that’s a key! Also, it doesn’t work! They changed the lock. This is the entrance to the caves under the castle. Apparently, the “feral youth of Bonnyrigg” tried to bust open the 17th century lock and they had to get a new one.
But, back to the Lady Walk:
The castle from the Lady Walk.
A tiger. Not found on the Lady Walk. I hit the clip art button by accident. Had you going, though.
4 March 2004
9:29 AM
We’ve just finished breakfast, and we had a quick look in the dungeon. And now, Agatha (remember my early relationship with Agatha?), now Agatha is leaving. I have turned in my 15 pounds for the gift for the staff. I have an entire day, but there is a lot to do. My wash bag is down with Margaret, but I am going to start collecting up a few things.
11:08 AM
Have finished packing about halfway, amazingly enough. Have gone down and made some copies for research. Having checked my records, I see now that in my time here, I have made 15 copies and drunk (or at least poured) 8 sherries. My bill for three and a half weeks will be 3.95.
11:14
Paid up with a five pound note. Donated the extra 5p. I was feeling generous. (I’ll make an extra copy later.) 12:08
Have done my castle walk. Agatha’s little red car is gone.
Did I mention that everyone was being boring again last night? Makes me feel a little better for leaving. Petunia wanted Nigel to read aloud an A.S. Byatt/Henry James piece—a poem extrapolated from his work. We had to listen to three versions of this. Listening to Henry James read aloud is not fun. Listening to Henry James, A.S. Byatt, and Petunia read aloud (with “highlighting” so that you can hear the changes) will make you suicidal.
3:42 PM
Extreme packtitude. The thing about packing is once it’s almost done, I want to go. I want to wheel this 5,000 pound bag down the drive while it’s still nice.
Said goodbye to Hubert. Went out and had a look out over the glen from the ledge outside the garden room. Didn’t even need my coat. And now, now . . .
Yes. It’s the final tea tray. Not the final, final tea tray. Just my final tea tray. Oh, tea tray. How I will miss thee. Two slices of choc-o-late cake from the tea tray. Oh, tea tray.
Sigh.
DON’T LEAVE ME TEA TRAY!
(gasp.)
Tea tray, I will always remember you. I will think of you every day, somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00. And I hope you think of me, tea tray.
Incidentally, I’ve spent all this time worried about badgers, come to find out it’s owls I should be concerned about. Owls. Like Hewdig. The owls that I hear a-hooting from early evening on. Not the screaming vixens. Not the deer. Not even the buzzards. The owls, which, I learned over dinner last night can swoop down and TAKE OFF YOUR SCALP with their 400lb tension death-grip talons. The owls, which must have been all over the place when I took my dark walk. Nigel was saying he was happy that they weren’t attracted to anything on his head when he did his, and then went on to explain the whole terrifying story. But unless Nigel wears hats made of live mice, I really don’t see how that would be a problem.
I’m shutting my window tonight, anyway. I mean, you never know. 6:00 PM
Have been working, but it’s all gone out the window now. I’m actually writing this from the steps, as I go online. There is a real end of school feel. We were all talking in the hall, and we all went out on the roof from Nigel’s room.
8:31 pm Drawing room. The diary cuts off abruptly there. What happened next is not recorded, but I will tell you in the next post . . . The Badger Diary, the aftermath. And I'll explain how this links to THE FUTURE.
*It turned out Ron had a similar stash in his room. I found this out only on his last day.
** This is the chapel at the end of The DaVinci Code, which I hadn't read at the time. From Scotland, I went to Paris, and spent most of my time in the Louvre, so I accidentally was on The DaVinci Code tour.
***This isn't new. I have never liked Scrabble. It's one of those things that people pull out because I'm a writer, and they always say, "I bet you love this! I'll bet you'll kill us at this game!" I don't. It's the only board game I actively despise.
**** I don't mean this to be a list of things I don't like, but I REALLY hate eggs, so this was like waterboarding me.
Part four of rollicking saga about books, and sitting, and writing too many things down, all within the confines of a castle.
19 February 2004
There is something about this place that occasionally makes we want to bang my head against my desk and just keep banging and banging until I lose consciousness. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.
Everything is down to fine calculations now. I realize that I have been here for exactly one week as of 9:30 last night. I know that I spent four full days here before running off to Edinburgh, and I felt like I was pushing it then. My hope was to make it through the weekend and go again on Monday. Not entirely sure I will make it.
20 February 2004
I was not in good spirits yesterday.
I’m not sure what it was, but I was really at the end of my rope. I wrote that last entry in the study. I was sitting there thinking that I had no idea—no idea at all—how I was going to make it for 15 more days. 15 sounds like nothing, but when you’ve only done 8 1/2 so far and you already feel that you are at the end of your rope 15 seems impossible.
I hid in my room for a while, determined to stay awake and read. I didn’t want to go to dinner, but of course, I did. You can’t NOT show up to dinner here or they’ll call The Yard. As it is, we are all developing Agatha Christie paranoia—the group locked in the far off house, killed off one by one. We look at each other over the table in the dark and quiet and wonder which one of us will go first, and how. There are loads of things around here you could use to kill someone, and lots of places to do it. We sometimes discuss this.
The informal dining room, where we plot the demises of our fellow residents.
Personally, I would like to be bludgeoned to death with one of the black bird sculptures from the hall. They look exactly like real birds who have been trapped in an oil spill, all gloopy and misshapen and agonized. Bludgeoning is nice and direct and really old-fashioned. I would also be okay with poisoning. In these sorts of murder mysteries, poisons tend to be used early on as a quick and relatively painless way of knocking someone off who isn’t very important to the story. Once you really get into your murder spree, you have to get way too creative, and that’s where problems develop. Then you start knocking Chinese vases off second-story ledges or rigging up guns to go off when doors are opened. Mistakes can be made when you get to that level. Beat me over the head with a bird or slip me something in the soup. That’s what I want.
After dinner, we went to the study, like we do every single night. Sat looking at the others, those green walls, the white window shutters, the electric fire, the tea tray on the oversized ottoman. Nigel sprawled on the couch. Paris Reviews all around us. Thought to myself, I have been here forever. There was never a time when I was not here.
Then things took a turn. My spirits began to lift, for some reason. I was hanging around, waiting for the phone. I read the paper. Nigel read the Ford Maddox Ford piece on D.H. Lawrence that I’d found for him. Then Petunia said, “Right. Hubert’s not here. I’m plugging in my computer.”
This was breaking the rules in a huge way, and I wanted in.
I connected on Petunia’s number for about 20 minutes and actually collected e-mails. So much happiness.
Woke up this morning. Head was completely cottony. Stuffed up. Ears blocked. Headache. I thought, Right. Here we go. It was a cold! All made sense to me. Felt like crap at breakfast. Wanted to go back upstairs immediately. Nigel finally mentioned how “much Maureen always dominates the breakfast conversation.” Several times been pointed out that I am the “quiet and mysterious” one. This is from a man who disappears every morning right after breakfast and goes into the woods for an hour with his new axe and won’t tell anyone what he is doing out there.
Said I was just feeling a little under the weather, and that I might go to Bonnyrigg and visit the Superdrug.
Petunia gave me a pack of Echinacea and two fizzy vitamin C tablets. (Petunia is turning into the big giver. All those things I said about Petunia . . .) I took one Echinacea, put the tablets in water and drank them (tastes like Tang), took two cold pills, went back to bed and finished book, which seemed much less creepy. Fell asleep somewhere around 10:30 AM. Woke up at 12:20. Didn’t want to get out of bed, but once I did, found that head felt clearer. I think now I will slap on my hat, clear the mascara smudges from under my eyes, and go to Beautiful Downtown Bonnyrigg.
4:08 PM Just returned from Bonnyrigg. Yes, even the small trips into town hold their little adventures now.
Went down the drive to wait for the bus on the other side of the road. Watched two buses go by on the castle side. Finally, a bus came. The driver was very nice, and told me that I’d need to catch a bus on the other side of the road (again, the castle side) to go to Bonnyrigg. This defied logic, as I’d been watching them come and go, and there was really only one way they could go, since the Polton Road West (where Hawthornden is) leads only to Bonnyrigg or Rosewell. But I said okay, and went to the other side of the road. I waited there, and a girl rode by on a pony. It was a rather fat, black and white one. An old man came by and said something very sweet and totally incomprehensible to me. The girl (who had ridden the pony down to a drive just beyond ours) came back, leading the pony down the sidewalk, just past me. Finally, a bus came. It was driven the same driver I’d just spoken to, and now he went to Bonnyrigg.
I bought some pretty basic things, including a container of Cadburry’s hot chocolate, which I added to the tea tray upon my return. My return consisted of standing at a bus stop in Bonnyrigg for another twenty minutes, listening to these kids with spiky hair (the famous “feral youth of Bonnyrigg”) talking about how the buses were shite. I am getting pretty good at convincing bus drivers that they really do go to Hawthornden. I was massively lucky that first time when I got Father Jack, who actually knew where Hawthornden was. That was the only time. The first driver today (of a 49) was convinced he didn’t, so I got off. But when the driver of the 77x also claimed he didn’t, I explained that it was on the Polton Road West, and I described the spot and assured him that he did, in fact, go right past it. A discussion ensued among several people, and it turned out some passengers knew where it was. I never envisioned a time when I would be explaining a route to a Scottish bus driver, but there you go. I don’t want to hear any more talk about my sense of direction. I am kind of the Sir Walter Raleigh of the group, exploring the area, taking new, exciting routes, bringing back swag like instant chocolate and colored editing pencils. I think I cut rather a romantic figure, and I envision a statue of me surrounded by buses.
There was a heavy smoky smell on the drive, like a massive woodburning fire. It was much too early for Nigel to start his fire in the garden room (he goes down at 6:15 to light it), and it wouldn’t have put off that kind of smell unless he’d decided to shake things up and burn the whole room down.
I’m not sure I’ve done a good job in really conveying just what conversations with the others are like—how I can say that I like them, yet I am in hell. Here is a totally made up conversation that captures the essence of my every morning and every night. It is not far exaggerated:
Nigel: Did you read E.W. Pantsbottom’s newest? Petunia: No, I’ve only read his first thirteen, then I grew bored. Nigel: It’s awfully good. Have you read his interview in the Paris Review? Agatha: I prrrreferrred My Spotty Thing. Nigel: Oh now that’s a wonderful book. Marvelous book. I remember reading that while I was hiding under an overturned bus in Peru in 1970. Such a good book. Petunia: He’s a bit of a beast, isn’t he? Nigel: Oh, he’s awful. Absolutely unbearable. Killed his mother with a biro. Still, good writer. Petunia: I don’t think so. I think he’s dreadful. And they made that awful film from that one book of his . . . Nigel: Ah, but that’s how you sell in Rome. We must all bow to Rome, mustn’t we?* Petunia: No, we mustn’t. And Rome will fall. Agatha: Hermia winks, does she not, upon the television antennae?
All laugh, except for Maureen, who smiles weakly and minutely examines bowl of porridge, possibly for some kind of escape hatch at bottom of bowl.
Nigel: What is it that Ben Jonson said about writing? Give unto me just enough ink, printer, forsooth I have not a squid of my own, nor equip’t with pen am I. Petunia: Well, he would, wouldn’t he! Ron: I was just reading in the TLS that A.Q. Patel is doing a new book on B.Z. Bee. I quite like A.Q. Patel. Nigel: Alan Wheeze, John Toad, Alistair Refrigerator, Nigel Flapjack and I once did a piece on A.Q. Patel. She said: (speaks in Latin for next five minutes) Ron: That’s good advice, that.
*Have I mentioned Rome? Rome is how the assembled refer to America. Daily it is mentioned that Rome will fall, in pretty much these exact terms.
21 February 2004
9:30 AM
It goes on. It goes on and on and on.
This morning’s topic was “Poets Maureen Has Never Heard Of.” Which isn’t a shock. I’m not huge on poetry, and I can’t say I keep up with current poets at all. In fact, it’s possible that I can’t name one. (That’s not true. I can name several of my teachers. And maybe a handful of others—by name only. It doesn’t help me.)
Before I came here, I wasn’t under the illusion that I knew a lot—but I thought I knew a little something about books. Just a little. I know realize that I know nothing. Truly nothing. I’m flabbergasted by these discussions—endless writers I’ve never heard of. I’m beginning to think the admissions committee was just trying to be funny by letting me in here.
Like this morning. I believe they were talking about someone named [some poet] because Agatha said she had a book on sonnet form written by him, and that he wasn’t a bad poet. (This stemmed from a discussion of Agatha’s current readings of Drummond of Hawthornden and his use of sonnet form, which was kind of midway between Petrarchan and Shakespearian.) Nigel chimed in that he had to go up in front of [the poet] for his interview for one of the Oxford colleges, and he told the story of how he was asked to define the word “ectoplasm,” and how he was an overeager youth, and how they rejected him. Then Petunia chimed in about how he wasn’t a very nice person—or that may have been in reference to the next person who came up. I didn’t even catch the name. Then Nigel started rattling off names of current female poets, one of whom was [a poetess], and Nigel said that she was very good, and that she’d actually been here with Nigel’s wife when she stayed here, and Hubert said yes and she was quite good and he hoped that she would send her new book along.
But you see what I mean? This was in the space of maybe ten minutes, between 8:50 and 9:00 this morning, while I was eating porridge. Now multiply that. Do you see? Do you see why I have to come home and immediately enroll in a program for special learners? Also . . . ENGLAND MUST BE BIGGER THAN THIS. HOW DO THEY ALL KNOW EACH OTHER?
I’m not saying I’ve never heard of anyone we’ve ever discussed. But it’s so infrequent as to be alarming. Maybe they are making things up?
The feeling that is developing is that any moment, I may turn one of the dark corners of the dungeon-library or a deserted corner of the walk and one of them might spring out and put a shiv to my throat and say, “Recite Ode on a Grecian Urn! Do it NOW, b%ch!”
After breakfast, I snuck downstairs and called Trevor in London and asked him to send me movies with helicopter explosions in them—only because it was the most devious and perverse thing I could imagine under the circumstances. “What is that idiot American doing? Probably hiding in her room watching films with exploding helicopters.”
Trevor said he was on it. Trevor is a fancy man who knows his fine drama, but he also knows his big-budget flick. Thank god for Trevor and his perfectly organized selection of 3,000 films. It is good to have kind friends with hobbies.
Chapter three in a seemingly never-ending saga about an idiot in a castle.
15 February 2004
We’ve come to understand something. This is not so much a retreat as it is a psychological experiment. I’m completely serious about this. It’s more to get the experience of being unhooked. And it has kind of unhooked us all. Nigel is getting really rangey. He keeps asking for an axe. He really wants to cut firewood.
The most bizarre time is what I call the Weird Hour, which extends from about halfway through dinner, and about 30 minutes into coffee in the drawing room. After the initial burst of conversation at 6:30, we go in to eat. We talk a little. Then it gets quieter as everyone finishes. Then everyone looks off in a different direction. Rose must sense this, because she always pulls the curtain back and reappears at this point to take our plates away. Then she brings out dessert, which is always some kind of homemade pudding or something incredible, and we have that, and it gets quieter, and we all stare off in different directions again. And then finally someone suggests that we get up. Then we go upstairs for the coffee, which Rose has already set out, and everyone takes what they want, and we all take seats and kind of fall into a “what now?” silence.
Nigel is our Mr. Conversation. He usually starts by leaning down low in his chair, and after about ten minutes of this very clear stare that screams, “What in the hell am I doing here?” usually starts to talk about something. Nigel has seemingly been everywhere. He’s not conceited or annoying about it. He’ll just come out with a “Someone set me on fire in Samoa once, and I remember thinking . . .” something like that. Then the conversation will usually turn to books and British personages that I’ve never heard of, or have only faint knowledge of.
Petunia continues to dress like furniture. Yesterday she was wearing a floor-length caftan made of black velvet with a colorful dotted pattern all over it. She always wears two necklaces, which are these heavy silver chains with big pendants hanging from them. They kind of look like those things priests use at Easter mass in Catholic church to wave the incense around (what I used to call the “incense maracas”), or maybe tea balls. Petunia is married, but she is getting phone calls and flowers from what she calls her “harmless flirtation.”
There is something about Petunia that makes me feel like I have met her 50 times over. I think what it is is that Petunia is kind of an amalgam of several people I met who had a lot they felt they needed to say about how they disliked America, and were absolutely compelled to say it—not to me, just near me. Like they were speaking in code, and I probably wouldn’t get it. They were usually things I agreed with, or agree with—issues I know all about because I live there.
Sometimes, when Petunia looks at me during one of these talks I’m pretty sure that she doesn’t see a person—she sees a McDonald’s franchise. Or Mickey Mouse. Pick your mass marketing symbol.
But what can you do?
Actually, Petunia is very nice. None of this is a big deal. But we’re all just stuck with one another. Everyone is very interested in what the others are doing. When people go into the library, they read the book to see what the others have checked out, and then report on it at dinner. We are all spies.
Except for Ron, who’s pretty low-key. He calls me Marion. I haven’t bothered to correct him. It’s fine with me.
1:41 PM
Two hours and twenty minutes until the tea tray. I’ve stopped eating lunch because it's way too much food, so I tend to get very antsy for that tea tray. I even have a little tea tray song that plays in my head. Trevor played me this song called Gay Bar by the Electric Six before I left. It kind of goes like this:
Girl I want to take you to a gay bar I want to take you to a gay bar I want to take you to a gay bar, gay bar, gay bar
And in my mind it goes:
Margaret Why don’t you bring up the tea tray? I’m really hungry for the tea tray I want the cakes from the tea tray, tea tray, tea tray
Sometimes, the tea tray actually comes up a little early, like at 3:45. When I go out, I’m usually the first person to see how many cakes are on there. These cakes are so good—and if I was a less honest person, I could take as many as I wanted. But I take the allotted amount. I consider this really virtuous, because these are seriously good cakes. Here. I took a little picture of them yesterday, just to make you all burn with jealousy:
6:00 PM, afternoon tea tray report: plain and chocolate covered digestives. That’s A-OK by me. 25 minutes until The Sherry. We’ll probably have a fire in the garden room, because Hubert was going to take Nigel to what sounds like the equivalent of Home Depot to buy the axe he has wanted so badly.
Number of badgers spotted: 0 Number of DVDs watched: 2 Number of days left: 19
18 February 2004
Unbelievably, I haven’t written for two days. So, I’m starting first thing this morning (9:52 AM). Actually, we’ve already had an adventure this morning. We went into the Pictish caves, the ones Queen Victoria called “interesting.” We are now quite a happy little group, and we went together after breakfast. There is frost on the ground this morning, but it is wonderfully sunny.
I’ll start with my birthday, February 16th. I left, as I had promised to do, after breakfast, maybe around 10:30 or so. I walked up the drive, and within five minutes, a bus came by and I flagged it down. Margaret had informed me that I could take the 49, 77, 77x . . . pretty much any bus that came by. It was a grey day, and the ride was about 45 minutes. I saw such fascinating sights as the hospital, the Tesco center, the Safeway, and Dalkeith, before the bus wound around. And then suddenly, we were going up the North Bridge, and I jumped off. It was very misty and grey, like I said, but Edinburgh is beautiful. Aside from a list of things I wanted to buy (simple things—roll of tape, some bath salts or oil, bottle of whiskey for group consumption) and the thought that I wanted to go online, I had no agenda.
I walked around, down Princes Street, up the side streets, making squares until I got my bearings. I ended up on High Street (or High Road—I remember it as ”high”), and then walked around the university area. I ended up going for lunch at a place called The Elephant House, which was very cute and trendy—elephants stenciled everywhere. It turns out that it calls itself “the birthplace of Harry Potter,” because it was the coffee shop that J.K. Rowling worked in. Some coffee shop. I thought it was a grim little place that she worked in—this place is lovely. I sent some e-mails from the Edinburgh Tourist Center, which I’d gone into in an attempt to find out where the closest internet café was. They had a nice, completely free room of computers there, and I was able to get on line next to a woman who was mumbling to herself in Spanish while rocking and laughing. Amazing view out the window. Dim and grey, yes, but Edinburgh is a really majestic place built to suit that kind of weather.
Basically, the rest of the afternoon was spent wandering through the mist, going in and out of shops. An inordinate amount of time was spent in an attempt to try to find a roll of cellotape (oh, think of the hilarity if I had asked for Scotch tape). My black boots, which feel comfortable enough walking around New York suddenly were killing me. So, I really wanted to stop walking, or maybe do something a little more constructive than go in and out of places like Marks and Spencer and the Post Office—which, again, was cleverly hidden inside of a store. What is it with the Scottish hiding these Post Offices?
Finally went down to Princes Street to catch the bus back at 5:30. The wacky misadventure starts here.
I got on the 77x, which I knew for certain went past Hawthornden, though the driver didn’t know where it was. He confirmed Bonnyrigg and Polton, so I gave him the pound and got on. It occurred to me only when I had gotten on to the bus that it was probably going to take a different route, since I’d come in on a 49. But how different could it be, I figured? If I timed the ride and followed the route, I’d be able to get back. Famous last words.
He cut through the Poltonhall Estates, which is a housing development with curvy roads. I knew from one other bus trip that the exit road out of the Poltonhall Estates was very close to the start of the Hawthorden drive. But that time the driver had known where Hawthornden was, it was daylight, and I was able to see where I was and judge from signs and trees where I was supposed to be. No such luck this time. It was completely pitch black—couldn’t see a thing out the window, and if I hit the button to request a stop somewhere along the road and got it wrong . . . then I’d just be stuck on a Scottish road in the dark. And that would be bad. Very bad. So I decided that the best thing was to ride to the next stop. Well, the bus kept going down a road that wasn’t familiar at all, and I jumped off at the next stop, because I didn’t want to go too far. I figured I was still within range of Hawthornden. Where I ended up was a dark street of houses. No shops or phone boxes, not that a phone would have helped me, as I just realized that I’d written the number down on a different sheet of paper. I’d recopied addresses on to a fresh sheet that morning and left it off.
This was a particularly hopeless looking street. It was damp, and water was running down a drain. My logic was that I’d cross the road and wait at the stop on the opposite side. No matter what bus came along, I’d be able to get somewhere. Then I could find a phone, call home, get the number of the payphone from one of you, and call the castle to get directions. Not a bad plan, right? I mean, in absence of an actual good plan, it was a plan, and a plan is better than no plan.
The bus that came along was a 145 or something. Nothing I’d ever heard of. I asked the driver if he knew Hawthorden—of course he didn’t. But he said that he went to Bonnyrigg. Bonnyrigg was fine. I figured I could catch the bus back from there, or even walk. It was a very bad time to walk, but at least I could get back.
As we were driving along, though, about a minute later, I was able to see just enough out the window to catch a glimpse of the castle gate (a miracle, since there are no lights, no sign, nothing at all). Actually, what I think I spotted was the gatekeeper’s house, which just looks like any other house, so how I knew that it was the castle is somewhat of a mystery and a miracle, but I whacked the button and lo and behold, I had made it.
I was so happy.
Then I saw the drive.
Ah, the lovely drive, that winding path through the trees that is totally secluded and has no lights at all and at the time was just a pitch black opening going into nowhere.
Yes.
The drive was honestly much, much more frightening than the thought of being stuck on the side of the road. The castle is fairly far back, totally out of sight. And if you’d spent almost a week hearing things about all the bloody battles that were fought around (“plenty of places to dump a body around here”), the quiet (definitely one of those places where you could scream and scream and no one would hear you), the wildlife, and the “feral youth from Bonnyrigg,” you’d have thought twice about going down that dark drive as well. I couldn’t even see the path. I could see NOTHING. (Mind you, it was only 6:30.)
Do even need to mention the badgers?
But what was I going to do? Stand there all night?
So I started walking. I made up a little song to scare away any creatures that came along. (The noise, I mean. The song itself was very good. I think it went something like this:
Little creatures of the forest please do not bite me ‘cause I am human and I will stomp you, so please just scurry and do not bite me. I know you’re furry but I am bigger and this is scary so do not bite me. Little creatures can you hear me? This is me singing, so do not bite me.
It kind of looped on and on, and it even had a little whistling part in it. A pretty relevant song to make up off the top of your head in the dark, I think.)
Of course, I’d also been entertained for days with stories about Ben Jonson coming to visit William Drummond (owner of this castle from 1580 until 1620 or thereabouts, also the poet, generally classified by the assembled as “second rate”). Ben Jonson walked here from London (and he was 300 lbs or something), so I figured that if Ben Jonson could walk from London (without even the benefit of the bus from Bonnyrigg or the Poltonhall estates) than Maureen Johnson could walk down the drive.
And so I did.
I was so happy when I walked back in.
The remnants of the tea tray were still there, and I grabbed a chocolate digestive out of some kind of joy of being alive. Then I pulled out the whiskey and went downstairs.
Nigel has been building fires in the Garden room for the last few days (in the fireplace, not just randomly), so I felt like I was getting the true Scottish experience—come in from the wet, dark, somewhat alarming outdoors, get whiskey, stand by fire. Nigel was showing us a review of his wife’s new book, which included a big picture, and was explaining that he had to take out someone at the [a famous newspaper] or something because he gave a very bad review. And then Petunia came in and gave me a hard-painted card! It’s really beautiful. I am tremendously outclassed here.
Ah. Lunch is here very early. (11:30) Coffee and banana. Nice. But what’s this? NO POST? Come on, people. Granted, I’ve only mailed a few things, but I’m trapped in a castle with limited access to ANYTHING.
WAIT! A noise. I checked again. POST FROM DAPHNE!
Daphne is the winner, having sent 3 letters so far. This is the 4th. This is postmarked Feb. 13th, so I guess we’re looking at about 5 days, generally. I keep the envelopes. That’s how much I like getting mail. Daphne has sent me a sequence of extremely suave guys on vintage 1960s-70s postcards. I got those at dinner on the 16th, so I’ll use that to get the story back on track.
So, Petunia came down and gave me a card, and then I felt bad for everything I’d said about her just the night before. After dinner, Nigel came down with a signed copy of his last book.
Anyway. That was my birthday.
Yesterday was blazingly sunny (as is today). I worked all day in the study, which is a modern room that was extremely well-done, and looks absolutely authentic. It’s authentic right down to the fact that it has absolutely no heat. I actually dragged the big electric fire in from the drawing room—so I was a bit of a . . . what was that burger that had one side hot, one side cold? That was me. My left leg was more or less on fire the entire day, and my right side was slowly going numb. But the view out of the study goes right out over the gorge, with the river right below, and the place is full of sunlight. I was actually blinded from about 3:00-4:00 and had to cover my face to be able to see.
Last night same as other nights. Drawing room. Tea and coffee. Reading. Talking. We were all trying to use the phone, so I wasn’t able to call much.
The regularity of our schedule is somewhat amazing. It never varies. Wake up at the same exact time every day (for me 8:15-8:30). Dress. Go down to have the same breakfast. Chat. Go upstairs at 9:15-9:30 (except this morning we all went and poked around in the caves). Can usually smell lunch or dinner cooking from about 10:30 AM on, which actually puts me off. (Makes the day seem short and weird.) Lunch arrives between 11:30 and noon. Usually decide around 2:00 that I need my daily fresh air and go for a short walk. Tea arrives between 3:30 and 4:00, which is just when the sunlight wears off and things start going purple and pearly grey. Head downstairs at 6:30. Dinner at 7:00. Get up from the table around 7:45. Go to the drawing room and sit around. At 8:45 or so someone always says, “It’s only 8:45. Can you believe it?” Agatha normally goes to bed at 9:00. Nigel, Ron and I are usually the last ones there. I either read, or talk down there. Once I came up early to watch a DVD. I tend to take my bath at 11:30, and then do things until 12:30 or 1:00.
Little variations are an extremely big deal. We’ve eaten in the dining room twice. I went to Bonnyrigg once. I switched breakfast cereals yesterday.
Some views around my room this morning:
The desk. This letter is actually up on the screen. Almost eerie, isn’t it?
Petunia’s card, depicting a typical day at Hawthornden. Those brownish things are drying rose pedals.
The Darth Vader Pez [given to me by my friend J. Krimble to keep me company] and Daphne’s men guard the precious cellotape.
SCOTLAND’S MOST WANTED
Headline from yesterday’s paper. Not technically a badger spotting, is it?
In the next installment: I suffer a personality collapse and break the rules for the first time.
This is the second installment of The Badger Diary . . . my never before published personal account of a month spent in a Scottish castle, writing 13 Little Blue Envelopes. You can read the first installment here.
February 12, con't
5:55 PM
Minor adventure.
I had been fighting off the overwhelming desire to go to sleep through most of the above. It just got worse. Since I normally don’t nap, I took this as a sign that I really needed to go to sleep for an hour, for whatever reason. Not that I had much choice—I was going to fall asleep whether I wanted to or not.
I napped for a short while, then got up and took some tea from the tray in the hall. Then went back down to the library for another look. I was getting something down, when I heard someone trying to get the door. They worked at it for a while, and then gave up. I went over to help them, only to discover that no one had been trying to get in—I had, in fact, been locked in.
I did mention that there was no heat in there, right? And that there is a dungeon below, and all that is above it is a crumbling ruin? Yeah. That’s what I was locked inside of.
I knocked, and kind of hoped that whoever it was would come back and let me out. She did. It was another housekeeper—a younger girl. (She may have even been the girl I passed on the path outside earlier. Don’t know if I mentioned that I saw someone.) She just said, “Oh! Sorry. Didn’t think there was anyone in there.”
I think maybe I would have checked. You know. Since it only locks from the outside, and it’s kind of dungeon-like, and it’s February. Could you see that door clearly from the photo? That is a real DUNGEON DOOR from the 1600s or something. Here’s a closer look:
Anyway, I’m glad she was still out there. Otherwise, there would have been some serious castle hilarity going on. I guess I would have just spent the night in there.
I’ve been here for 21 hours now without catching one glimpse of another writer. Dinner is in 45 minutes, and I’ll have to see them then. Except I feel like somehow they’ll evade that as well. Maybe the “accidental” locking in the library was part of a plot to keep me from meeting one of these people.
I have a mission for tomorrow: I must get to a town, to a post office. I am going to put all of this on a disk and send it off, and I am going to get a phone card. I might even be able to get online. Oh, the bliss. The neverending cascade of bliss that would be.
I think what happens here is that your brain has to go through a period of adjustment and acceptance. You have to deal with the lack of connection.
Oh. I’ve just checked my notes. I’m supposed to go for the famous sherry at 6:30. That’s in six minutes. While I seriously doubt anyone is going to show up but me (given the track record so far), I should go. Hubert isn’t even here tonight, so it could just be me, killing 40p worth of sherry by my lonesome.
The room where we have "the sherry."
6:45
I was right. But I saw the others. Agatha was on the phone, and she is in Evelyn. I just bumped into Petunia in the hallway. They are both about 50 or so. I’m supposed to go down now and have the sherry, because I just told Petunia I was.
Why do I now feel pretty sure that in a few days I’m going to go insane and go running back to Trevor and Grace? Why am I thinking that I may attempt to do this tomorrow? Maybe I will have a complete mental crisis every night and want to flee this place. That’s something to look forward to!
I don’t have much hope for the two others that are coming tomorrow. I am without hope. I should have let them lock me in the library.
11:11
I’m sitting in the drawing room by the (electric) fire. I just watched The French Connection. It provided some relief. I now have six more movies left. That isn’t going to last very long. Petunia and Agatha are very nice—if older. Agatha is very animated—a poet. Petunia is a non-fiction writer who is thinking of starting a novel. I understand now why I avoid writers. Writers are boring. I am enrolling in nursing or astronaut school as soon as I get home, which will be tomorrow, hopefully.
I don’t mean to sound so down on all of this. We have the castle to ourselves tonight, which is kind of a weird feeling. I have plenty to read, and it’s nice in here. But there is a strange oppressiveness that comes with the place right now. The gunfire and car chases in the movie helped a little, but unfortunately The French Connection is only two hours long, not the two weeks it should be.
I did talk to Daphne, which was exciting.
It’s not that the place is spooky or anything. It’s not. I just feel like I’m in some sort of detox program.
Petunia knows one of the men coming tomorrow. I’m sure he’s very nice, and I am equally sure that he will be exactly like Petunia and Agatha. There’s someone else named Ron that we know nothing about, but I assume the worst.
I guess I could call home, but I don’t feel like explaining that it’s weird, and then feeling even weirder when I get off the phone.
Oh, whatever. I am going to persevere. Or go insane. I joked about The Shining. Is now not so funny, this joke.
Number of badgers spotted: 0 Number of writers spotted: 2 Number of days left: 22
13 February 2004
I was kind of down on the place last night, and things didn’t get much better after I finished writing. It was kind of a long night. But I should explain, and it gets better, anyway.
Agatha is small, and kind of birdlike, and she carries her purse around and shows you where everything is. I had been shown all of the things she was showing me, but there was no point in saying so, since we really didn’t have anything else to discuss. So I let her get me a sherry (that I honestly didn’t want) and make a little hash mark in the book by my name. Then Petunia came in with a box of wine she’d brought back from London, and there followed a five minute negotiation on how we would all share this wine, which she said repeatedly was the equivalent of four bottles. And Agatha was determined that we would all help pay for the wine. And I don’t mind contributing to anything, but the truth is I didn’t want wine. And I already had a sherry and was kind of tired, but I didn’t seem to have any say in the matter—or I didn’t make my feelings known fast enough, because within about three seconds I owed Petunia a bottle of wine, and had been poured a glass, which I had to carry along with my other glass of unwanted alcohol, because at that second Rose the cook (the one who had accidentally locked me in the library) came to tell us that dinner was ready. All the way to the dinner room the conversation went on about exactly how many bottles we were going to owe, because Petunia was insistent that she was probably going to drink more than us anyway, since she didn’t like sherry. And Agatha explained that she thought the sherry was all right, but that she normally had two glasses of wine with dinner, no more. And then there I was—feeling all American, because I don’t drink with dinner. And Agatha had already said something like, “You must be very cold. We always think of Americans as having very warm houses.” Which is most certainly true, but there was something about it that seemed to imply (in a very benign way), “You Americans certainly use a lot of energy!” And I was already the vegetarian, and because of me everyone had to have vegetarian food for dinner (something I didn’t know until that moment), since there were only three of us and they weren’t going to make multiple meals until the other two arrived. Petunia and Agatha assured me for ten minutes straight that they didn’t mind this at all, and that their eating habits had changed so much from the meat and two veg days of their youth.
Dinner conversation was sort of as follows (not exact, but pretty close):
Petunia: Have you thought of doing interactive poetry? Agatha: Have I whot? Petunia: Interactive poetry. On the internet. I’ve written a book on the internet. Agatha: Oh, I say! Petunia: Yes.
Thoughtful silence.
Me: What is interactive poetry? Petunia: Well, poetry you’d put online, so your readers could interact with it. On the internet you can use forms and shapes. Though, I suppose it’s nicer to be paid for your work. Agatha: I don’t know if I’d like that. Interaction. Petunia: Yes.
Petunia pours herself third glass of wine from box. Thoughtful silence.
Petunia: I’m thinking of starting a novel here. But it’s very daunting, isn’t it? Agatha: Oh, rather. Yes. Petunia: Blank slate, as it were. Agatha: Oh, yes. I’m starting a new volume of poetry, and it’s quite terrifying. I did the Lady’s Walk trying to get some inspiration, but I’ve yet to come up with anything. Petunia: Yes.
Thoughtful silence.
Petunia: I do have that other project . . . Agatha: Oh yes. Your nonfiction book. Petunia: Yes. And I thought that I might do both. But that’s very hard, you know. Going back and forth. Agatha: I say, it is hard, isn’t it? Fiction is so very different. I can’t handle prose, myself. Petunia: It’s quite different, yes.
Petunia pours herself another glass of wine.
Petunia: But I do think you should have a go at the interactive poetry, Agatha. You can do so much with the text and the words. Agatha: I’m not very internet-savvy, I’m afraid. Petunia: It’s quite easy. And I think it could do so much for your poetry.
You get the idea. Imagine two or three hours of that. A night.
Petunia is a little more matronly and artsy. She has kind of a heavy pear shape, and she wears big, dramatic outfits. Yesterday she had on a matching shirt and pants made of a lovely fabric—but one that looked a lot more like something you’d cover a sofa in, and not so much something you’d wear. Kind of a maroon with a raised pattern of curlycues in black velvet, all done up at the neck with a big broach. She has big, blonde curls, and heavy eyes and lips—and when she goes into a silence she kind of puts her chin down and stares down her belly, which is kind of like looking over a hill. Agatha is a glass-turner.
Anyway, we had dinner and dessert, then we were sent up to the drawing room, which had been warmed for us. A tray of coffee and tea was set out. I had coffee to try to counteract the sherry and the wine. Agatha and Petunia were even more soporific after their multiple wines and sherry and dinner, and the pauses were stretching to unbelievable lengths. They went to bed around nine, and I was hit with a combination headache, stomachache, and caffeine rush. This is why I went and got a movie. I needed something to distract me from being here, and also a little bit because I felt like I shouldn’t be sitting around in the drawing room watching The French Connection. I should have been composing interactive poetry or painting miniatures or something.
I couldn’t sleep when I went upstairs, because I’d napped and had coffee. So I was awake until 2 or 3, listening to the radio.
But—I was determined that today I would turn things around. It was raining this morning when I got up. I hurried up and got dressed and went down and had a little breakfast. I then decided that I would tackle the problem of the shower attachment. I realized that I wasn’t the problem—it was. It would be pretty much impossible to attach it to the spigots in our bathroom, because of their shape. So, solution—I took them into the men’s bath, which has the perfect shape spigots. It doesn’t really matter what bath we use, and the men weren’t here yet anyway.
(I took a bath last night in the men’s bath, for two reasons. One, the cold water tap somehow got broken on ours, and two, Petunia wears this really heavy musky-rose perfume, and she must have been in there getting ready for bed, because the musky-roseness of the place almost caused me to pass out. So I knew the taps and had started formulating this plan the night before.)
I set up shop in the drawing room and worked for the morning. The rain stopped. So I decided to try to get into Bonnyrigg. I decided to walk it. It was about two miles, and it only takes about twenty minutes to get into Bonnyrigg, but then it takes another twenty to get to where the stuff is. It’s not an exciting town, but it has some stores and a library. I got some envelopes, and a bottle of water, and a phone card, and this was all pretty exciting. I wasted a lot of time trying to find the post office, which is hidden inside a store called Scotschemist or something. I never did find it. I’d been gone for a while, and probably ended up walking for an hour or hour and a half total up and down and around, so I decided to take the bus back. The bus was very easy, but if you’ve ever seen Father Ted, my driver was Father Jack. Not looked like Father Jack—was Father Jack. He even screamed “What?” the first three times I asked for the castle (it’s a request stop). He got really cheerful after that and whistled the whole trip, which took about three minutes.
The last two people have come. I haven’t spoken to them much, but they are a lot different from Petunia and Agatha. I saw Ron earlier. He looks mid 20s or maybe 30, and more a Nirvana shirt and seemed really nice. I just met Nigel a minute ago. Nigel is maybe 45 or so and is married to someone who was here before, and who I am told is somewhat famous. I’ve never heard of her, but that is meaningless.
Number of badgers spotted: 0 (Although Petunia says she saw one, and it was no big deal. Just minding its own business.) Number of writers spotted: 4 (all) Number of days left: 21
In the next installment: I start singing songs to cake, the residents start getting weird, I get annoyed.
Here is a question every author* hates: “Where do you get your ideas from?”
The answer is: MY HEAD, but people want something more specific than that. They want something authorly and evocative that makes me seem smart. “I pull them out of my a$%,” is not the kind of thing that sounds good when quoted in a fine publication read by members of the American Library Association. So when I am asked this, I just smile enigmatically and then blind the questioner with a high-powered flashlight I keep in my purse expressly for this situation. By the time they regain sight, I have escaped through the fire exit or a window. (It’s okay. Authors are known to be shy and often a little squirrely. This is why editors have us all fitted with tracking chips when we are signed. Mine is in my head, right behind my left ear. I tell people it is a “backwards earring.” During a deadline, it emits a high-pitched frequency whenever I leave my desk. I tell people this is my “theme music.”)
But there is one book that has a genuine background story.
In late 2003, I applied for an international writing fellowship. I did this ENTIRELY to escape from the noise of the ice cream truck that was circling my neighborhood. It was early fall, and it was hot, and they had just built a school down my block. The ice cream truck came and circled, like a soft-serve shark, once every ten minutes. I started to DREAM the music that came from it. I started asking people for the most quiet and deserted place they knew of to get any writing done. I was told of a writing fellowship at a castle in Scotland, just outside of Edinburgh. The fellowship was offered by a very ritzy literary organization, with a list of impressive names of former winners. All of your needs were taken care of—the writers were fed, their clothes washed, their rooms cleaned—all so you had time just to write. There was no internet, no television. Just quiet and castle and books and smartness. The application required that you explain why exactly you wanted to go, so I described the ice cream truck for two pages. “It’s a migraine set to music,” I explained. “I MUST ESCAPE THE FIENDISH DAIRY PEDDLERS AND THEIR PLINKY-PLONKY TRUCK.”
I was more surprised than anyone when they accepted me. Adding to the surprise was the fact that my acceptance letter had been lost in the mail, so instead of informing me in November, as they meant to, I got a call six days before I was meant to show up. So on very little notice, I picked up and went to Scotland, with the notes for a new book entitled 13 Little Blue Envelopes. And it was there, in the castle in the Scottish woods, in a cold and dark February, that the book was started.
What seemed like an excellent idea (no television or internet!) quickly became a shocking reality. Unhooked from the world, I wrote an eighty page account of my time, during which I clearly go insane, like something out of The Shining.** I called this account The Badger Diary, and I sent it to just three people (including my agent, Daphne) on disks which I would burn and mail out once a week, when I would escape to the post office. It was never intended for publication (this was before I kept a blog)—it was simply a record of what I was sure would be my death. Aside from them, no one else has seen The Badger Diary. For five years it has remained hidden from the world in the depths of my hard drive.
For reasons that will soon become clear, it is now relevant for me to return to the world of The Badger Diary. And I decided to share selections from it with you, here on this blog. Even though it makes me sound like a bit of a nut. I become paranoid, insecure, and have many strange scrapes.
I have changed the names and removed the details of the other writers who were at the castle with me.
Because this is ALREADY WRITTEN, I’ll be publishing them every day for a little while! Like, a week at least!
So, dear readers, for the first time ever . . . THE BADGER DIARY.
11 February 2004 11:15 PM
So I am here. The cab ride from Edinburgh was about fifteen or twenty minutes—not so far out. There’s a long drive, and then—hello. It is actually a castle. A small castle, but a castle. I was greeted at the door by Hubert, who is a PhD student in his late 20s or 30s. He was very nice. He carried my terrifying bag up the several sets of stairs.
THE CASTLE
As it turns out, I’m not late. There’s only one other person here. Her name is Agatha, and she was asleep when I arrived at 9:15. (I later heard her going down the hall to the bathroom, and I had my door open. She slipped right by without my seeing her (I was under the desk—plugging something in, I wasn’t hiding down there.) She didn’t stop by.) I’m told that there is actually someone else here named Petunia, but she had to go to London for a conference. There are two guys coming on Friday. I am the only American. This is all I know.
So, my visions of being greeted by four other writers sitting around the fireplace drinking whiskey or grog or something have been dashed.
I told some of you that all the rooms had fireplaces except one named Boswell. Well, meet the newest inhabitant of Boswell. Who’s surprised? (It’s really not necessary, anyway. It’s nice and warm. But I did go into the other rooms (except that of Agatha, Ms. Elusive Earlytobed) and gaze in envy at the fireplaces. Still, my room is nice.)
After I arrived, Hubert took me down to the kitchen, which is lovely and large. They had dinner warming for me in the over. Then he bid me good night. I set to work unpacking and setting up The Boz. I snooped around those other rooms and took some pictures (before more people are here, thus increasing my chances of getting busted with the camera).
Bed of The Boz. Note yoga mat in corner. That is going to be “exercise” for next three weeks. [Note from 2009 mj: never used it. Not once.]
This is the view down the hall of the fellows floor. That room at the end with the bag on it belongs to Agatha, with whom I have already developed an adversarial relationship with in my head. I mean, who goes to bed before 9:00, anyway? Maybe she was really bored. I don’t know. But she didn’t even stick her head in when she came back from the bathroom. In my mind, Agatha is 80 years old and hates me.
Note the pencil sharpener. Next to that, just out of view, is a tray of salt and pepper shakers. A whole tray. I know that’s what’s in there because I checked.
Time for bed soon. I have decided I must have a bath. I have no idea why, but I do know that just the mere idea of drawing this bath caused me acute fear. Everything in here makes a lot of noise, and I was pretty sure that the running water (which is down the hall and around the corner) would have Agatha awake and chasing me with a fire poker. It’s not too bad, though. I am drawing it slowly. At this rate, it should be ready by Friday.
While I was just out there, I had a look at some of those books in the hall. All pretty good, but I couldn’t decide on any. Actually, it occurred to me that that probably wouldn’t have been a great time for Agatha to come out, as I was crawling around on my hands and knees reading the spines. It kind of makes sense to do that, but it’s not the way I should meet someone I’m already convinced is some kind of sleeping monster that lives in the room next to mine.
Number of badgers spotted: 0
12 February 2004
NOW WHAT?
So, this morning I had a little battle with the shower attachment, which does not like attaching to the spigots, and ended up soaking the entire bathroom. Washed hair in sink. Vowed revenge on shower attachment.
If you look out my window, you’ll see what looks like a grassy lawn. It’s actually the roof of something (possibly the dungeon—seriously) which is covered in a thick moss. It’s like a really old patio. There is a well in the middle of it that goes way down. Here’s the view:
That big brown door is the library door. The library is really nice, but at the moment the heater is missing. Right next to it (a little hard to see) is a metal plate on the ground. That’s the entrance to the dungeon. Right below the castle are what I am told are Pictish caves. I have no idea what that means, except that they are old, and there are drawings in them that I have heard are thousands of years old. That’s two olds. Old squared.
The castle itself is from all kinds of periods. It kind of sounds like the building plan was, “Hey. I’ve got a few bucks, Let’s go buy a stone and stick it somewhere.” It may have been a bit more organized than that, and I think it’s actually been flattened a few times, but there you go. History with Maureen: totally inaccurate.
Anyway, there are a lot of rooms that I didn’t see last night. There’s a gorgeous formal dining room with a circular table where we eat on Sundays. There’s a huge drawing room, which I did sneak into last night. Here it is. I took these in complete darkness. I really was creeping around, literally:
[Note from 2009 mj: this is the room I would spend EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in for the duration of my stay at the castle. This becomes relevant later. I just didn’t know the significance of this room when I was first writing. Back to 2004 mj . . . ]
Okay—I’m getting off track here. So, Hubert showed me around . . .
OKAY—I’m getting WAY off track here, but I must report something. I just got up after typing the word “around.” Out in the hall, I spotted a few things. One, this:
My lunch. Note the tag that says “Boswell” and the salt and pepper.
Then I turned and saw THIS!
This is Agatha’s door again. Her lunch is on the windowsill. The two things in this photo, however, are more interesting. One, see that bag? That’s her laundry bag. She seems to refuse to take it in. It was there last night. It is there now. I know she’s been out of her room because Hubert says he saw her this morning. The fact that Agatha will not take in her laundry only adds to her mystery.
Two, see that box? It’s marked “flowers.” Someone loves Agatha. Considering the difficult relationship I have had so far with Agatha, I find this difficult to believe, but there you go.
Everything is very low-tech. For example, if I want to use the copier, I use it. Then I write down in the little book how many copies I made. If I want to take a book from the library, I fill out a slip and put it where the book was. Then I write down in the library record what I took and when I took it. We have plenty to read here. If I don’t catch up on some serious reading, the only person to blame will be me.
Anyway, once we went through everything (it was really low-key), Hubert said, “Well, okay. Bye!” And that was kind of that. All I know is that someone comes and finds me at 7:00 for dinner.
So, I went back to my room and my room (which is already neat) had been made neater. Also, my laundry (all two pieces of it) had been removed. When my laundry comes back, I will actually take it into my room. That’s the difference between me and Agatha. We’re cut of a totally different cloth.
There are a lot of walking trails, but I just went around the immediate outside of the castle and up the path to the road. I’d estimate that the drive is maybe 1/5 of a mile long, but my powers of estimating distance on foot are not great, so it’s probably ten miles or something. I walked it in about ten or twelve minutes, up and back. Does that tell you anything? Right at the end of the drive, there are houses, so we really aren’t so far out.
Oh, something else about Agatha . . .(I am building her profile, fact by fact.) She has a car. Hubert mentioned this when I was asking how to get to Bonnyrigg, which is where I can easily get online. I told some of you that I had decided that I had to become best friends with whoever had a car. Obviously, this is a problem. However, I think Petunia has returned from her meeting in London. Now there are two cars outside. I’m guessing that Hubert has a car also, but I have no proof of this. All I know is that there was one red car outside last night when I got here. This, I must presume, is Agatha’s. When I came back around the path, there was a white car. That, I presume, is Petunia’s. Maybe I can be best friends with Petunia. Petunia and I do not have the troubled past that Agatha and I share.
I’d read something about badgers before I came here—that they were supposed to be all around, and that they were vicious. I laughed at this until some of you told me that badgers were not the small, feeble, groundhog-like creatures I was imagining. You told me that they were big, and that they had big teeth, and that they were mean. I began to joke about how I was afraid of them. In fact, when I arrived at Heathrow, Trevor and Grace were waiting there for me holding up a sign that read: RABID BADGER TOURS. We all laughed.
Well, as I was walking around outside, I started thinking about the badgers and I smiled. Then I heard something move, and I swear to you it was instant Blair Witch Project in my head. I was suddenly imagining badgers everywhere—badgers that wanted to find me just so they could sink their teeth into my neck. I looked for them everywhere, There were strange dug-up mounds on the lawn, which I suspected were the work of these dangerous badgers. I was really kind of scared. It was really kind of pathetic.
No badgers. Lots of really loud birds and a very timid squirrel.
Just went out of the room again. I notice that Petunia, in the room next door (called Evelyn) has not only eaten her lunch, she has put her container outside of her door. Agatha has not even picked her lunch up. Is there anything to indicate that Agatha is human? If so, I haven’t seen evidence of it.
I’ve also realized that it’s possible—possible—that I’ve gotten the rooms the wrong way around. It may be the Petunia is really in Jonson, which is the room with the laundry and the flowers and the lunch, and that the reason that these things haven’t been taken in is because she is still in London. And maybe the person sneezing and eating lunch in Evelyn is Agatha. Still, I think I have it right. I could have sworn that Hubert indicated Jonson when he mentioned Agatha, and I heard no movement in Evelyn last night. Also, I swear that white car just got here, so I think that is evidence that Petunia is back.
MOVEMENT IN THE HALL. I couldn’t get up quickly enough to see who it was, but I heard footsteps and then a door closing. I figured it would not be a good idea to spring out and say AHA!, no matter how curious I am. I don’t think it would be good if people thought I just hung around by my door all day long, waiting to leap out whenever someone passed by. They might not think I was entirely stable.
Okay. I think I am going to relocate myself now to do some work. You might be asking yourself, “Maureen, shouldn’t you have been working all along?” Well, I am working. I’m writing. This is all part of my process. Besides, they don’t appear to care what I do. Hubert suggested that I sleep until Friday if I wanted.
Tune in for Chapter Two, in which I have adventures and the paranoia truly takes hold . . .
* Or, me and my friends. Certainly Justine Larbalestier.
** If you've read 13 Little Blue Envelopes, you'll know that one of the rules of the trip is NO TRAVEL JOURNALS. This eighty-page (single spaced) document was probably what made me include that rule.
As I am here in the London Office, I wanted to continue my study of English and American cultures. Today, I am going to talk about television.
When I was a tiny mj, you could only see UK shows on public television, which seemed like the territory of shut-ins, math teachers, and people who had renounced fun for religious or dietary reasons. So I was both amazed and slightly horrified to find that I liked what I found there, this rich vein of British programming. At the time, this was seen as basically akin to going to a fine wine producing region of France and demanding a bottle of Boone’s Farm’s very best Sun Peak Peach. We were America! We MADE television! British shows were cheap and weird and grim . . .
. . . and also the best things I had ever seen. To this day, I tend to watch more British television than I do American. It’s just easier and more acceptable now. Also, we Americans relentlessly buy UK television shows. We rarely show the originals, not on the major networks, anyway. We remake them in versions where everyone is American doing American Things. The Office, American Idol, Life on Mars, Dancing with the Stars, Kitchen Nightmares, Wife Swap, What Not to Wear . . . all UK shows, remade.
This has always bothered me. The originals of these shows are often much better, much more nuanced. The real Life on Mars, for instance, was an amazing show—genuinely creepy and fun. I lasted for three minutes of the American remake, which apparently hired a crack team of enjoyment-removers to pick the show to pieces, and a second unit of obvious-hint-highlighters to blow a bugle and flash a light whenever a glimpse of the show’s underlying mystery appeared.
But am I saying that all UK television is good and all American television is bad? Most assuredly not! I am just saying that if any of you in Los Angeles are thinking about making an American Doctor Who, know that I have a car full of tasers and trombones waiting at my beck and call. California is only a five-day drive. And while the tasers will certainly give you a shock, believe me . . . you have never heard me play the trombone. I have never heard me play the trombone, either. It will not be good for either of us, but you will suffer the most, because you will be writhing on the floor.
Some shows, however, are meant to be different. If you want to learn about some of the differences between America and the UK, you can learn at a lot by simply watching the two versions of the popular game show, Deal or No Deal. (I should point out that I don’t particularly like game shows, but in the interest of research, I studied both versions of the program. For you, readers, I will do anything.)
Deal or No Deal doesn’t belong to either nation. It was originally invented (like many things) by the Dutch. Unlike many excellent Dutch products—Vermeers, gouda, fine porcelain, tulips, stoopwaffle, and delicious chocolate—this one probably could have stayed at home. Like a fast-moving virus, it took hold all around the world, played in different ways, with the essential underlying format remaining the same. The UK version began in 2003, and the American version in September, 2008. (Or so says Wikipedia. If this is true, I’m amazed, as it seems to have been on FOR ALL OF TIME.)
In case you’ve never seen Deal or No Deal (do you exist?), I will give a brief explanation. If you know the game, you can skip the next paragraph and sail down the page.
HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED: The contestant on the show, guided closely by the host, is faced with a selection of boxes or briefcases. Each box or briefcase contains a certain amount of money (in the United States, there are 22 boxes, with values ranging from one penny to $500,000). At the start of the game, the contestant gets one box, which is placed on their podium, unopened. The contestant starts picking boxes, which are opened one by one, revealing different amounts of money, the hope being that the high values of money will remain in play. As the game goes on, a figure known as “the banker” will call in and offer the contestant varying sums of money to get them to quit the game. The amounts offered are at least partially based on the remaining value in the boxes. The contestant can either take the money offered or keep going, right down to the two last boxes, at which point they can either keep the box they got at the beginning, or swap it for the last remaining box. The box is then opened, and the contestant’s prize revealed.
A game of straight-out BOX PICKING would not be that popular. The game works because of the drama structured around it, and this is where you get to see the cultural variations.
Let’s begin with the American version.
The American Deal or No Deal is hosted by Howie Mandel, a comedian popular in the early 1980s for an act in which he would stick a rubber glove over his head and inflate it by blowing out through his nose. Howie Mandel is the kind of person people probably suspected was either dead or playing the circuit in Las Vegas. This second one is not far off the mark, as the set of the show is very Vegas-like—great, gleaming platforms, neon panels and glowing hi-tech screens, cityscape in the background, and 22 models in identical outfits with 22 identical silver suitcases arranged on a set of glowing steps. The banker appears in shadow, walking around a balcony, as if he is studying the events. I was going to make the joke that you expect Celine Dion to pop up from behind them all, singing a song, until I saw that the #1 favorite moment from the show’s history was, in fact . . . Celine Dion popping up behind them all on a screen, singing a song.
The contestant’s family members also come to the show. I don’t know for a fact that they do it this way . . . but I like to imagine that the producers come to their houses in the middle of the night, put a bag over their sleeping heads, and drag them screaming to a waiting van. Once inside, they are gassed. They wake up on the set, where they have been placed on a little island off to the side of the stage, forced to watch their relative play the game. Presumably, they are kept in place by an invisible electronic fence, which is dropped at the end of the game, when they always run free of their prison.
The producers throw flair at this show with reckless abandon. In this clip, they surprise the “ultimate Wicked fan” (who, bizarrely, has never seen the show) with a special appearance from Glinda the Good Witch. Based on my limited viewing experience (doctor’s offices, at home in Philadelphia while passing through the living room), I have observed that every contestant on the show seems to be a screamer. I mean, a REAL, THROAT-BLISTERING SCREAMER. Watch how Glinda slowly reacts in genuine alarm throughout the clip, while the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Relatives join in the screaming effort.
When we Americans do a show, we don’t %&*# around.
The UK version of the show is much more low-key, and yet . . . vastly more suspenseful. No Glinda here. No models with silver suitcases. No limos behind velvet curtains. Just quiet, protracted agony . . . exactly the way the English seem to like it.
The host of the UK version is a man named Noel Edmonds, an even-voiced bearded man with a gift for inducing low-level, unending tension. He’s sort of a cross between everyone’s favorite uncle, the nice one who knows how to tell the best stories, and a serial killer, one who’s extremely good at luring victims with his friendly demeanor and then chops them to bits while humming along with classical music on the radio. The one who, when later apprehended, is remembered as being “a really nice guy, but there was always something about him that made you a little . . . nervous, I guess. Nice to talk to, but you wouldn’t invite him over to your house.”
Noel Edmonds
Unlike the flashy American set, the UK Deal or No Deal is filmed in a warehouse, and goes to no effort to hide that fact. There’s no big stage—just a plain platform where host, contestant, and money stay on the same level. The banker is never seen at all, and exists only as the unheard voice on the other end of a telephone. The money is contained, not in shiny silver briefcases, but in cardboard boxes that make a nice, hollow sound. The boxes are held, not by models, but by very ordinary people. And unlike the smiling, silent models, the other box-holders will talk the contestant through the game, often very emotionally—because the contestant is one of their own, a friend who needs to be guided. It's a community effort. (Which still doesn't explain to my satisfaction why Noel Edmonds refers to the audience members as "pilgrims," but who am I to question the ways of crazy Uncle Stabby?).
In fact, you get the feeling that you aren’t actually watching a game show, but rather the exploits of an unlikely, ragtag team of amateur robbers—retirees, students, the random nurse or doctor—who presumably met over Facebook, all bound by a collective disgust with the tedium of everyday life. They have joined together to do a bank heist. Someone probably proposed the idea as a joke, but it was a joke that took on a life of its own. A few weeks later, 80 year old Edwina, office manager Nigel, Angela the shy phlebotomist, Mark, the guy who collects cuckoo clocks . . . are all tearing away from a Barklays Bank in a white transit van, ripping off their rubber masks and throwing them out the window. In the back, Simon (the plot mastermind, a movie buff with thousands of precisely organized DVDs who devised the scheme by combining heists from 28 classic films) is laughing and throwing fistfuls of money at Victoria, a lovely movement teacher who grew up in Essex and wouldn't normally get mixed up in this sort of thing . . .
Amazed by their success, they have thought up an enjoyable way of splitting the proceeds by staging a makeshift game in their warehouse hideout, also used by a friendly local murderer who they recruited as the host.
To give you an idea of the magnificence of this game, here are four emotionally wrought minutes from one episode, in which everyone is inexplicably dressed in Dickenswear, and all of the pirates cry. It’s like Little Nell has died all over again:
I will continue my research. Please let me know if you have any questions or observations of your own.
