So, here we are on the first day of Blog Every Day April! I am very excited by the number of people who are participating . . . so many people who are signing on to write (or film) something EVERY SINGLE DAY this month. For example! My friends Charlieissocool, Alex “Nerimon” Day, and John Green! And many of you I’ve just met! (I am keeping a LONG LIST. It even has a Twitter at @BEDA09!)
Because it’s so new, I’m also going to remind everyone that this blog will be published here AND at the new maureenjohnson.ning.com, where you can hang out with other people, and write your own blogs, and chat.
From me . . . what you’re going to get is more or less of a blow-by-blow account of how I spend an entire month. Let’s start NOW.
So yesterday, I was filming a video for the release of the Suite Scarlett paperback. The filming, I was told, was going to be in the Algonquin Hotel, because it is a famous, classic New York hotel, and one of the scenes from the book takes place there. Yes! The Algonquin, home of the famous Round Table—the center of New York literary life in the 1930s! So classy! And we’d been booked into a room simply referred to as “the library” on the second floor, right across from the Helen Hayes Room. More classy!
I was expecting to find one person wandering around up there with a single video camera. What I got was an entire crew of people, and lights, and those umbrella things that photographers use, and those reflective things, and two cameras, and headsets, and someone walking the hallway to make sure the filming could continue without disruption.
I was put in a chair. There was already a table of makeup ready for me—a roll of brushes as long as my arm. After that, I was miked up and put in a chair, and things were placed around me, and lights and sound were checked.
When I was said and done, the first thing I realized was that the entire setup looked amazingly like the set of Monsterpiece Theater.
Me.
Alistair Cookie, Monsterpiece Theater
“This is like Monsterpiece Theater,” I said. But everyone else was too busy taping things to me to pay any attention to this. I had a LOT of stuff taped to me. I felt like a refrigerator.
So we filmed a bunch of stuff. Me talking about the book. Me saying hi to people shopping for books. Me reading. It was a lot of me doing stuff. And between takes (there was even one of those clapper things), the makeup woman would come over and polish me. I just sat very still throughout the whole thing.
I was reminded, sitting there, of the many, many articles I’ve read where actors talk about what it’s like to be on a set—the many hours they spend sitting in a makeup chair so that they can step in front of a camera and do something for two minutes. Then they have to get touched up and stuck back in their trailers.
But this was just me, talking about stuff. But you see what I mean, hopefully. I RELATED to the pain of movie stars. Later on, when we had to do some other shots, I was wandering around with my microphone strapped to me and a pack on my back and two people with cameras. And I had all of this MAKEUP on. I could see people looking at me and wondering who I could possibly be.
“This must be what WEATHERPEOPLE feel like,” I thought to myself.
Anyway, one of the questions I had to answer—several times, on several takes—was if I knew I was always going to be a writer, even when I was Scarlett’s age (15). I didn’t have anything ready to say, so I just started talking. On each successive take, I would a). try to remember what I’d just said, b). try to make it slightly more coherent.
The answer is . . . yes. Yes I did. I’ve been writing forever, largely because I was always a bit of an Indoor Child. You know what I mean. Likes indoor recess. Takes books to the playground and sits on the monkeybars with them. Bleeds easily.
I was also an only child. Only children are forced to come up with ways of entertaining themselves. I thought back on some of the games I invented to entertain myself as a tiny mj. Here are just a few:
LOBSTER POOL
This is where you jump into a pool and swim out to the middle, then imagine that a truck of lobsters as been pulled up to the swallow end and . . . inexplicably . . . been offloaded. The pool is now full of lobsters on one end. Your job: get out of the pool as quickly as you can by feverishly paddling to the ladder. (I don’t really know how fast lobsters can move. In my imagination, it was REALLY FAST.)
Can also be played with crabs.
GROCERY STORE WARS
You and your friends have been kidnapped by a madman who forces you to live in a grocery store. Every once in a while, he comes down and chases you through the aisles. As you shop, figure out how you can defend yourself and build shelters out of the things you see.
You can try this in other stores, but I always found grocery stores work best. Other stores often have things that are actually useful in these situations. (See Dawn of the Dead—the zombie movie in which survivors live in a mall—for examples of this.) It’s much more challenging to figure out how to defend yourself with things like muffins, cream cheese, and plastic wrap.
Don’t ask yourself why anyone would kidnap children and make them live in a grocery store, as this will ruin the flow of the game. COUNT CRAZY AUNT’S CHANGE
My Aunt Clara was out of her mind in many ways and disliked most living things except her very greasy and violent cockatoo (named “Too-Too”) that would occasionally escape from its cage and terrorize me. She had owned many of these horrible birds, and often told me a dramatic story about the one who died right before I was born. “I let him out, just one day,” she said. “Just one day . . . and first he flew into the curtains and got all confused, and he then flew right into the kitchen cabinets, over and over again, until he slid down and fell into the sink.” Even as a child, I realized the bird had committed suicide, but I never said this. Living with my aunt couldn’t have been fun. Her goal in life was to hold a koala. She failed, largely because she never went anywhere. So she just collected small stuffed koalas and pictures of koalas and smoked and made jello and hated people.
Her birds were unlike my grandmother’s many parakeets, who were pleasant and chirpy, probably because my grandmother was a much more pleasant person. (Thought she did go through a strange period in which every bird she bought only had one foot. It wasn’t intentional. She’d get them home and they’d just start hopping strangely . . . and sure enough, one foot. Don’t buy your parakeets at Sears, that’s all I can say.)
Anyway, my Aunt Clara distrusted doctors and banks. So she refused to ever get medical exams, and she kept all of her money in old peanut butter jars in her closet. “So I can watch it grow,” she would say to me. She did like me, however. She liked kids, because “you can trust ‘em.” When she babysat me, she would often have me count her change while she listened to talk radio. I even kept records of my change counting on this pad of paper she kept on her kitchen table. For some reason, I thought this was fun. When I would go to other relative’s houses and I got bored, I would ask to count their change too. I would report this back to my aunt, who nodded sagely and said, “That’s my girl.”
I have no idea what this means.
These are just some of the stories I COULD have told in the video, but decided not to. They are, however, the kinds of stories you can look forward to hearing more of this month, as I become increasingly desperate to figure out what to blog about EVERY SINGLE DAY.
And anyway, if had been smart, I would have just recreated THIS video.
I try to be very honest with other people—especially you, readers—but lying to myself is totally acceptable, and I do it well. I tell myself some whoppers, and I believe them, because I am just that skilled. Or stupid. Whichever.
One lie I am very good at telling myself is that I blog regularly. “I just did it!” I will say. “Look!” And I will point at the screen.
And someone will look and say, “Well, no, this is from two weeks ago . . .” And I will say, “Look . . . a SQUIRREL!” And then I’m gone. Out the door, out the window, if necessary.
I usually have perfectly good excuses for why I haven’t blogged. I have to write books and stories. That takes a lot of time. I have to read and answer a lot of e-mail, and have meetings with people, and return phone calls. I travel a lot, so I have to stand around in lots of lines. And read. And eat. And sleep. And, of course, there’s the Abba shrine to polish.
And before you know it, that blog I think I JUST WROTE is two weeks old.
But I have been reading your e-mails, comments, tweets, and Facebook messages, and it seems that many of you would like me to blog more. This is a wonderful thing for me, as it means YOU are reading. YOUR requests cannot go ignored. I am lucky to have readers such as you.
Your requests are very important.
Important or not, I still fall down on this particular job a lot.
So I was in the shower the other day, washing my hair (I have all my good ideas when I am washing my hair—maybe I have a button on my skull that I accidentally push that controls all the thinking) . . . anyway, I had this idea. “Why not blog every day in April?” I thought. “Even if it kills you? Why not make that the goal of April? Not killing yourself, but blogging every day.”
Such a simple idea. I’ve had thoughts like it before, but this time, it felt Right. After all, I just finished Scarlett Fever, and Suite Scarlett is about to come out in paperback on May 1st. So I saw a tangible goal for myself . . . blog every day until the official release of the paperback.
So I stuck this little thought of mine up on Twitter (I can Twitter every day just fine, because that only takes about 20 seconds). I told everyone I was getting ready for Blog Every Day April. I hadn’t realized that Blog Every Day April sounds like a real thing, like an organized event. I started getting replies back from people saying that they too wanted to do Bog Every Day April. I got a note from YouTube celebrity Alex Day saying that he was going to Vlog Every Day in April.
A few hours later, my little idea from the shower had an acronym: BEDA. (Or VEDA, if you are vloging.) People were asking for rules! So I am now giving the OFFICIAL rules, and the manifesto of the thing I just made up.
THE RULES OF BLOG EVERY DAY APRIL (BEDA)
1. Blog every day in April. THE BLOG EVERY DAY IN APRIL MANIFESTO
I commit to this idea and am determined to create something EVERY DAY in April, including weekends. Every day, I will find something to say. I embrace the reality that there is always something to talk about, if you are willing to take the time to look for it.
I ___________________ promise to blog every day in April.
SOME QUESTIONS I HAVE SEEN, SOME I MADE UP, WITH ANSWERS
Q. What’s the point of blogging every day in April?
There’s always value to signing on to a project and seeing it through. But I think blogging every day in April has many potential benefits. If you want to be a writer, for example, this is a great idea . . . because you have to get used to the practice of writing every day, whether you think you can or not.
And I think April’s a good month for it. April is often a busy, crazy, transitional month. It’s when taxes are due (in America). It’s when school is just reaching its peak and people are just seeing the summer ahead. It’s when rain comes and flowers grow, and there’s candy, and it’s also only 30 days long! BONUS!
Q. Are there punishments if you mess up and don’t blog for a day?
I am not one for setting up punishments, because I believe that the punishments will administer themselves. At least in my case. If I mess up a day, LOTS OF PEOPLE WILL LET ME KNOW, and I will feel the tweak of failure. You can set up any punishment you like, if punishments help you! But I am a great believer in getting up again and trying the next day.
May I also suggest setting up ENCOURAGEMENTS? Here are a few ideas.
- Why not blog with a friend, or make a NEW FRIEND and read each other’s blogs every day?
- Why not promise yourself a small prize of some kind? A book, for example? (I could suggest a Suite Scarlett paperback, because the timing is excellent . . . but you see the idea here. Some small token of accomplishment.)
Q. I don’t have a blog! And if I set one up, no one would read it.
I HAVE ANSWERS FOR THIS! And an EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!
Yes, I saved a surprise for the end of this post!
I have opened a NEW BLOG SITE! On Ning! Which is just another type of blogging site, like this one, but with MANY COOL FEATURES!
For at least a few weeks or months, I’m going to post all my blogs on BOTH sites, just until enough people know it’s there, and I get all the kinks worked out, and get it hooked into my main wesbite . . . blah, blah, blah, technical stuff. So you can read BEDA here OR there. It will be the same blog!
But the difference is . . . on the other site, YOU CAN PARTICIPATE if you want! On the mj Ning blog, you can become a member (which takes about ten seconds and is free, easy, not an invasion of privacy, etc.) Here are just a few of the cool things:
- When you sign up, you can start your own blog there. You can also upload photos and videos!
- Members can friend other members . . . so you can easily find a blog buddy!
- There are forums to chat on. And there is a live chat at the bottom of the page going on at all times! I will occasionally pop on this chat—sometimes announced, sometimes unannounced!
So why NOT sign up? Why NOT join BEDA?
Anyway, I am doing it. I have sworn now. It’s official. Every day in April. Want to sign on? Have ideas? Let me know!
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.
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.
I’ve just gotten off another plane, this time from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I was visiting the Michigan libraries Spring Institute, along with John Green and Hank Green. The whole event was excellent, top to bottom, and it was great to see John and Hank. At the last minute, we threw together an informal gathering at a local library—just a little drop-in between a panel and a dinner. It was done on less than two days notice, so as we drove over in the car, we said, “Maybe ten people will come. That would be nice.”
What we didn’t expect were A HUNDRED SCREAMING, AMAZING PEOPLE armed with gifts and video cameras. We were completely unprepared for this. I didn’t even bring a Suite Scarlett to read from, so I asked if anyone happened to have one . . . only to see Scarletts shooting up in the air all over the place. John read from Paper Towns, and someone even provided Hank with a guitar so that he could do some songs. I was so happy, I did this dance.
We were so overwhelmed by the whole event that we could barely speak for the rest of the night, and sat at dinner alternating between stunned silence and insane laughter.
Michigan may now be my new favorite place in the world. Thank you to everyone who made it happen!
The only bad part of today was when I was at the airport, waiting to get on the tiny, tiny plane. I was really tired, because I had been up late talking with the librarians and John and Hank, and because the guy in the room next to mine was doing some kind of interpretive dance at five in the morning. So I was not at my best and brightest when I arrived at the Grand Rapids airport and was fumbling around, staring blearily at the self-check-in screen. The designers of the screen had gone to some lengths to make their instructions as vague and conflicting as possible, while issuing increasingly random demands.
The four check-in computers were in the middle in the check in area, with three of us poking away at the screens, saying things like, “They want what?” “Passport goes where?” “I can’t fit my head in that slot.” “All the signers of the Declaration of Independence? In alphabetical order?”
I usually appreciate this kind of attention to detail, but I was sort of not in the mood for it at the time. I gave up and decided to talk to a person. There was one passenger at the check in desk itself, and another one way, way, way back, lounging against the barrier. I was pretty sure I had heard him say he was just waiting for someone, and he didn’t look like he was doing anything else. I mean, he was really far back.
So I took a spot between him and the desk and zoned out for a good five minutes, until he tapped my arm and said, “The line starts back here.” With a growl.
And then, this other guy who had just walked up said in a low and knowing voice, “She’s got selective hearing.”
Now, here is something you need to know about me: I DO NOT CUT IN LINE. If I even THINK I have possibly, maybe, in some way almost cut in line, I pretty much have to act like Dobby in Harry Potter and start beating my head against the wall in self-punishment. So that was Level of Horror One.
Me.
Level of Horror Two was the obvious contempt in the man’s voice. To be fair to me, he had picked a strange spot to start his line, nor was he acting like a guy in a line. He was practically doing this:
I think if you start a line, you have an obligation for it to be at least in VISUAL DISTANCE of the place you want to go. If you arbitrarily decide to pick a strange, hidden, distant spot half under a potted plant, I think you should expect some confusion.
Level of Horror Three was the REALLY nasty and self-righteous Second Guy who thought I hadn't just made an understandable error, but had actively plotted to cut the one-person line in a dead airport by feigning deafness.
Normally, these kinds of things do not bother me. I live in New York, so you more or less have to shoot me in the kneecap for me to take any serious offense. But this morning, I was stung. If it had just been the first guy, I would have thought nothing of it. It was the pile-on effect, this idea that I had SCHEMED MY WAY AHEAD OF THE NON-EXISTENT LINE. As if my goal in life was to beat the system at the Grand Rapids airport and get to security first.
The insults hit me on so many levels.
You know how some things just get to you? Even when you know that in the long run, they simply do not matter and you shouldn't care? And that caring actually makes you kind of crazy? But you don't care about that either? Because you have gone a little crazy?
I was astonished by how rattled this got me. Maybe it was the afterschock of all the joy I had just experienced. I immediately gave the first man his “spot,” simply saying, “It wasn’t selective hearing. I genuinely didn’t know. I am sorry.” Then I went and stood behind him, in the ridiculously far away place.
He just stared at me. When it was his turn, he went up and started berating the man behind the ticket desk because it was raining in New York and the plane might be late and someone was going to have to do something about it.
My ire was really reserved for Second Guy—the guy who felt he had to jump into to this already strange confrontation and confirm my evildoing. I confined myself to giving him what I would like to think were very guilt-inducing looks, but I probably just appeared insane and crosseyed.
Of course, you should never give in to people like that, and I know this, but it didn't stop me from spending the rest of the time I was in the airport watching out for him and obsessively trying to think up comebacks.
“Oh,” I wish I had said. “Is this a$%&*le convention in Grand Rapids this year? Are you an attendee or featured speaker?”
No, I thought to myself. That’s what he would want. That would make me seem like that kind of person who did those kinds of things. A much better plan would have been to go up to him and say, “It’s not selective hearing. I’m just 80% deaf in my left ear. Thanks for noticing.”
I could have pulled that story off really well, because my good friend Nurse Trixie is really 80% deaf in one ear. (A fact I discovered when we sat next to each other in 3rd period study hall one time, and I sat on her bad side and thought she was selectively ignoring me for an entire semester, when in fact she could not hear a word I was whispering.) Nurse Trixie has told me all of the medical factors behind her deafness, and I could have USED HER STORY to give Second Guy a wicked case of moral whiplash and WON!
In the end, I just got on the plane and took a nap . . . but I am still wishing I did something more . . . like steal the tragic story of my friend's deafness and use it against a largely imaginary enemy.
You will think from this story that I am perhaps not in the best of moods. So untrue. I burst with happiness, and I am now going to prove it.
TODAY’S INFLUENCE: GOLDFRAPP’S “HAPPINESS”
It’s hard to be influenced by something that came AFTER the book was written. Also, I normally do not approve of giving any direct visual images of characters. I don’t like to point to pictures and say, “so and so looks just like this!” I have a real problem with this because a). the characters live in my head with the brain monkeys and no photos can be taken in there and b). I think you should draw your own mental pictures.
However . . .
I love Goldfrapp, and her new song “Happiness” is in my songlist for Suite Scarlett 2. I wanted to see what the video for Happiness looked like, since I listen to it about 30 times a day.
I was amazed to find that it features quite an accurate representation of Scarlett and Spencer, as they exist in my mind. (A grown Scarlett, appearing in many disguises, but the Spencer is pretty much dead on.) And it’s not just what they look like . . . it’s the whole video, the activities. This is just the kind of part I could see him getting cast in (his dancing skills play a major part in the next book). And the sly little side roles . . . that’s very Scarlett. It’s a strange feeling, like someone has been rummaging around in my head. I watched the video and said, "HOW DID THEY KNOW?"
It's uncanny enough that I feel I have to show it to you.
Even if you haven’t read the book . . . the video is worth watching. It’s an excellent homage to a movie called “Small Town Girl.” It will make you happy.
Do you see what I mean? Aren’t you happy now? (What I REALLY should have done was just hopped around those guys in the airport, because that would have been the best response of all. IF ONLY I HAD THOUGHT OF IT.)
In my absence, stuff has been coming in through the windows. (And by “stuff,” I mean pieces of information, and by “windows,” I mean the internet and other places where information is found. Sorry. I should have been clearer.)
I don’t mean to imply that you should spend all your time reading about me, but in case you are really bored and looking for stuff to do, there’s this interview with Publishers Weekly, and this piece I wrote for the wonderful John Scalzi, who would never have cast aspersions about me at the airport. In fact, I wish John Scalzi had been with me, because I bet he would have had a good comeback.
And now . . . the best part of every post . . . the giving away of things!
First, the very kind Namlhots (who would know where to start a ticket line) decided to give his sleep mask away to Cassandra mortmain, because she sounded so disappointed that she didn’t get one. So, e-mail me your address Cassie!
Today’s RANDOM BOOK WINNER IS . . . breanna. Breanna, please send along your information!
And today’s giveway is . . . FIVE SLEEP MASKS. They’ll go to five random comments who ask a question, or tell me what I should have said to that guy, or really anything else. Basically, just say you want one, and you will be entered!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some jumping around to do.
