The Writer’s Tale: the final chapter

I love this book….seriously…I bloody LOVE it!

I’ll set the scene.

When I get a book to review I sit down with a large coffee, pen and paper in hand settle into a comfy chair and then proceed to look for both positives and negatives. I don’t care who has written it, it could be penned by a friend and I would still pick it apart. I’m like that, I can’t help it. If a book is boring, so be it but I’ll say so, and heaven help a book with lots of typos!

Now, Doctor Who has a special place in my heart (I won’t lie, just in case it does make me a teeny bit biased). I wept when the final series died, then grudgingly loved the film, even if they did do the dirty on Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor. When I found out that I had a tenuous family link to the second Doctor it made me proud, but sad that I’d never known that side of the family, although it did make my daughter something of a hero at her theatre group. I have always loved the show and when it came back I was dubious to say the least…but from the very first show that Russell did I knew, as we all did, that he had created magic and not only resurrected a family favourite but breathed new life into a national treasure.

So, I’m sitting with a coffee and I settle down to “The Writer’s Tale: the final chapter”, and as if by magic The Sarah Jane Adventures came on the telly at the very time I settled in my seat. I’m so lucky to have been given a copy to review but I decide that it isn’t going to sway me, I’ll tell it like it is, after all what is the point of reviewing a book if you don’t? The publishers won’t thank you for it (well…they might), the writer’s won’t and the prospective readers certainly won’t. How many times have you bought a book with a great review only to find that its rubbish and the people who reviewed it were just sycophants with an interest in the product? Well that won’t happen here.

Now call me a nerd but when I opened the book for the first time, I went straight to the index (well I am an indexer), then to the contents and the  Key to References. I have issues with the index but I’ll come to that later, the Key to References had me smiling. There in front of me were listed all the episodes of Dr Who, Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures. I love that kind of thing (carry on with the nerd references) but then you have a Who’s Who…fabulous! Too many times in a large book of this kind you get names thrown at you from all directions, and unless you have an eidetic memory it can be a bugger remembering everyone. This is one of those simple but effective lists that take the pain out of having a bad memory, and it’s interesting – who’d have known that Gethin Jones was a Cyberman AND a Dalek?? Well obviously I did after reading through the list. There you go, that’s one pub quiz question I’m ready for!

In the introduction Russell mentions taking out the scandal, the lies and the swearing. Well I’m sorry but if by some miracle of modern technology Russell reads this, this bit’s for him – mail me darling….I love a bit of SL&S…forward me the bits you left out. I won’t tell a soul, honest!

The index. This is the only area that lets the book down. The indexer (yes, they are real people) could have done with more space in which to index the book properly, although with a book of this type it is very difficult to index anyway. If you are looking for information on a subject, once you get more than 6-10 page numbers after a heading you start to lose the will to live. As an example I’ll take Julie Gardner, RT’s partner in crime. Look her up in the index and you’ll find over 200 separate page numbers showing where she turned up; most of these I expect are passing mentions with no actual useful content.  No-one is going to trawl through all those pages just to see where she is mentioned – what you need are qualifiers to help you decide where you need to be. An index is like a road-map of the book, it should give you direction and the hope that you will reach your destination refreshed and ready for the next trip. An index of this type just shows you where names of all the important people have been mentioned, it is more of a concordance and as an index is virtually useless.

Getting down to the actual book, the format just draws you in. The narrative is basically e-mail correspondence sent between Ben Cook and Russell T Davies, with text messages, e-mails to others, scripts thrown in for good measure and there are brilliant illustrations throughout. The original book takes you to 2008, but if you already have it and don’t know whether to buy the updated version….the next part of the book is a large as the first! With over 300 pages of new material this is one seriously sized book that takes you to the end as we know it. And I didn’t mention the photographs…there are snapshots inserted into the book that will have you smiling, although I must admit to flinching when I saw the final picture of Matt Smith and David Tennant…that will take some getting used to.

If you are a fan of Dr Who or Russell’s work then you will absolutely love this book. But you don’t need to love Dr Who – this is a book for writers. What is made perfectly clear right at the beginning shocked me, and continued to shock all the way to the end. Russell T Davies is filled with the same doubts and fears as every other writer. There are times when he actually worried that his work is crap. RTD…thinking his work is rubbish? Unbelievable! This book brings you the highs and the lows, the fears and doubts, the deadlines and production costs, the cigarettes and the wandering around Cardiff feeling like a zombie. When reading this book you MUST look at the times of the e-mails and note the fact that not only do Ben & Russell like a good header title (quite often ending in the word ARSE) but they never seem to sleep. I’ve lost count of the emails sent at 3am.

There is so much in this book that I can’t begin to write about it all, you have to read it for yourself. There are thoughts on how to write scripts, what type of stage direction works best, editing, delivering, sticking to budget and sticking (or not) to deadlines. There are times when the show must go on, and times when the fun seeps through. We are taken through the whole process from beginning to end in a wonderfully candid way and are allowed a look into how Russell T Davies thinks and creates. Everything rolls around in his mind trying to find a state of existence, the thought processes he calls the “Maybe” appear right from the start, and it’s fascinating when you realise that the physical writing is the very final stage of the journey before all hell breaks loose and the scripts become reality. Cudos must go to Ben for asking the questions he did; the rapport between the two is wonderful, and you really do feel that you are eves-dropping on a private conversation between two friends.

All in all, this book is wonderful. It’s like sitting in a squishy, comfy armchair in the corner of Russell’s study. You can almost hear the clicking of his keyboard.

I would highly recommend “The Writer’s Tale: the final chapter” to anyone who is interested in writing, television, Dr Who, Russell T Davies, Ben Cook…hell ANYONE at all!

But for the writers I’ll leave the final words to the man himself…

“when nothing is real and nothing is fixed, it can go anywhere. The Maybe is a hell of a place to live. As well as being the best place in the world”

http://www.thewriterstale.co.uk/

Twitter – more than just a time killer

Ok, so it’s a new year, I’ve eaten my bodyweight in chocolate, drank a little less than last year and sat through the tedium of Christmas tv. Like everyone else I’m looking towards the new decade being positive. I will endeavour to encourage growth in the areas I want (when I can figure out what that is) and I am looking for things that need tidying away forever. New year, new decade -  bye-bye rubbish, hello fun, frolics and fabulousness!

And one thing I will NOT be getting rid of is Twitter.

Around last May I decided “what the hell” and jumped in. And I haven’t really looked back. At first it was an extra to Facebook, but it has swiftly overtaken it to be my kind of place. No invitations to groups no one cares about, no in-boxes full of stuff you have to wade through and it’s instant. Instead of waiting for someone to update their facebook page you can talk to them straight away, it’s easy to meet new people and find organisations that interest you and if, heaven forbid, you get bored of them an unfollow is just a click away.

Since I’ve been on Twitter I’ve used it to:

talk to my family

talk to my friends at TABI

said hello to old school friends who’d probably forgotten who I am

caught up with college buddies

“met” some locals who I probably wouldn’t have done any other way

followed some very interesting “celebrities”

got to know and talk to some lovely “celebs” who are wonderful people

got to know and talk to some lovely people who aren’t celebs but should be

hung around in a virtual bar full of crazy, brilliant people

competed in one of the best “pub” quizzes ever

marketed my businesses and my artwork

help raise some money for Children in Need

watch others raise money for their charities

catch up with the news

network with others in my profession

network with others in professions I’m interested in

just networked

There are probably more uses that I’ve put Twitter to, but by now you get my drift.

The beauty of Twitter is the ease at which you can follow what’s going on, you can make your profile private if you want, but I think that stops some of the fun, after all you’re there to meet people. It’s easy to get thousands of followers…just allow the spammers and advertisers to follow you, but the beauty of Twitter is you just block them and get on with talking to real people. Although I don’t automatically block advertisers, after all I may be interested some day. I only wish Twitter had an alternative to the “block” feature, such as the “please don’t be offended but I don’t want you following me just now, but I may change my mind in the future” feature. Block does seem quite harsh when you just don’t want an advertiser to follow you, after all these companies with thousands of followers aren’t really following what you’re saying, they’re just number-crunching.

Forget the spam, the attempts to get you to look at celebrity “intimate” moments, the advertisers for garage doors ten thousand miles away from your area, the plain old nutters and please don’t ask me to click on links – you just know I won’t! These are minor inconveniences.

This is not just another Facebook, this is a living, growing organism. It’s as diverse as the world’s population and there is something for everyone. It is NOT just about following your favourite celebrity to see what they had to eat last night (although admittedly Kelly Osbourne talking about a food fight with Sharon in a restaurant is intriguing).

Sure, I’ve wasted more hours on it than I care to admit to, but honestly most of it was not time-wasting. Being in an area that is as far removed from the major populations as you can probably get in the UK without going by boat, this is how I network and let the world know that I exist. And hell, this is how I know that the outside world exists!

Twitter is changing the face of networking in a friendly open way and one that can be put to good use in an instant. It’s less formal than LinkedIn and more immediate than Facebook and MySpace. If someone needs help, someone will hear…and on numerous occasions has. If someone has a cause, there are people to stand by him. It’s as huge as talking to someone half a world away that you will never meet, or as small as asking someone down the county what the roads are like.

And it’s also the way I get to waste half an hour if I just fancy seeing what @MrsStephenFry is up to.

Tarot

A few years ago I did something that changed my life. It wasn’t massive, and it’s not the be all and end all, but I made an awful lot of friends and re-learnt a skill that I love.

I decided to re-acquaint myself with the Tarot.

OK, there are knockers out there; I’ve heard it all so don’t bore me with messages telling me how we are fake/charlatans/deluded etc. Each to his own.

I decided after years of wanting to learn properly to look for some way of studying to read the cards. I’d had one really good reading a few years earlier and a really bad one that made me laugh with its text-book card meanings and witchy paraphernalia – I knew just as much as the “witchy-woman” did and knew I could read the cards properly with a bit more experience. Needless to say I didn’t take her up on her offer of lessons in “how to set up an altar”!

So, I happened to be trawling the internet one day, a bit bored and just typed Tarot into that well known search engine…and found the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI). I’d heard of them after watching Jane Goldman’s series, one of which dealt with Tarot reading, and thought that if she could do it so could I. They had (and still do have) an on-line training course for beginners, (at this time available to non-members) so I entered my name as a potential student. Then I put it to the back of my mind. And got an e-mail to start the course a few months later.

It’s proper study and it’s not for those with already full timetables, but throughout the course duration I really got to know the cards and love them. My mentors were wonderful and the exercises make you think. And then I did my first e-mail reading and had a crisis of confidence. How the hell does it work? How can reading a deck of cards come up with such information? Is it all make-believe and self-delusion? I actually scared myself and went too deep into the process behind the reading of Tarot. But after reading Brian Bates “Way of Wyrd”  it actually made sense (the author put my own thoughts into words) and the worry just melted away. So I carried on and passed the course, and loved every minute of it.

I wasn’t really prepared for what came next though….without the course I wondered how I would keep up and not lose my skills, so I joined TABI as a member. At first it was a bit daunting, the Association used Yahoo groups to communicate back then and although I’m not backwards at coming forwards I was a bit shy when it came to “talking” to people. There was at the time a certain amount of sniping among members…I’d actually joined at a time when TABI was going through a rough patch, but I jumped into the fray anyway. And before I knew it I had enrolled on their Endorsement process and was taking my reading to the next level, reading for clients through TABI’s Free Reading Programme. This is where we carry out three-card Tarot readings for clients who ask for readings through the website; throughout the process we are mentored to make sure that our reading is of the appropriately high level demanded by TABI. We work to highly ethical standards and do not make predictions. Again I worked my way through the process with a wonderful mentor and eventually became an Endorsed reader for TABI.

But it didn’t end there, I’m also now the Editor of TABI’s monthly e-newsletter “Tracker” which is available for both members and non-members on a subscription basis…you subscribe and every month Tracker will hit your mail box (I’d like to have it making a card shuffle noise as it does so, but for now you’ll just have to imagine it).

See I said it changed my life. One random decision has made me a fully-fledged Tarot reader, who writes a newsletter and makes up spreads for others to use. Most of all joining TABI has made me some wonderful friends all around the world – it may be the Tarot Association of the British Isles but membership is open to everyone whatever their location. Whenever you see the TABI logo, you know that you have found someone who is dedicated to ethical readings, and someone who is part of one big Tarot reading family.

Oh there’s another thing I forgot to mention….I now have a certain addiction to Tarot decks. But that’s another story!

If you want to know more about TABI just pop along to the website www.tabi.org.uk

In Pursuit of Perfection

In Pursuit of Perfection

or

Why I’ll never amount to much!

A very self-indulgent musing…

When I left school I never left learning behind. It’s something that should follow you throughout your life, it keeps the old brain ticking and gives you something to talk about when you’re stuck in a room full of people you don’t know. I can’t tell you the decimal points of Pi, but I can tell you what makes good paper, how to tell the age of a building and numerous other useless bits of information.

And that’s where the problem lies!

When I went to college I ended up doing an honours degree in Librarianship and Information Studies. I loved every minute and found out that the stereotype of a librarian is a massive cliché …we were the first in and last out of the student’s union and there were no pearls or twin sets to be found. But I digress…

When I began work at the University I still needed to fill my brain… night-classes were the thing. I wanted to be an archaeologist but didn’t make the grades, so night-classes filled the gap. Aerial archaeology, architectural archaeology, megaliths … seventh heaven! Then palaeography…I love old handwritten documents. I’d been researching my family tree for quite a while…so I did a genealogical distance learning course. Now this last one actually came in useful. When we moved to the Far North I had a 6 month old daughter to look after, no childcare and no chance of getting a job. I went from a University librarian to a housewife. There were only a few library jobs here and later, when they did become vacant, I soon found that lack of childcare especially during school holidays meant that returning to work was unobtainable. So I added genealogy to my CV and became a genealogical researcher.

It’s something I’m good at, I enjoy it …but as the internet grew and people started researching from home I soon found out that this would never earn me a crust. Still…I joined the newly formed local family history society as soon as I arrived in the county and the learning continued. I started collecting Roman coinage and researching a local landed family instead of going to night-classes. Ok it’s interesting and I could tell you a whole heap about the family and about coins of the Constantinian era. But it’s just never enough!

Can you see a pattern forming?

Genealogy won’t earn me enough to live off…so I enrolled in a Distance learning indexing course with the Society of Indexers. Fab…but finding work is very hard and in a competitive market I’ve realised it just won’t earn me enough to live off. At least not just yet…so again I’m looking for that perfect mix of interest and something that will give me gainful employment.

In the past few years I’ve learnt how to make felt and handmade paper, I’ve made glass (now these are excellent pastimes) and moved on from the academic to the crafty side of life. I’m part of a fledgling craft initiative, I’m still on the committee of the family history society and I still research when there is demand and hold out hope for more indexing work.

But still there’s more! I found Tarot again (I dabbled at school then left it behind when college beckoned)…but this time I found something nearer to the perfection I’ve been seeking. I joined TABI (Tarot Association of the British Isles) after completing their course, and found that I loved the cards and I can read them well. I guess it’s something I’m good at – I’m certainly good at buying Tarot decks!

And yet more!! I found fractal artwork last year and have spent a lot of time learning the craft and creating some passable pictures. But perfection is still far off.

So here we are. Well done if you’ve read this far, it’s certainly been an eye-opener for me.

I spend my time in the pursuit of perfection, and this long list of my interests only just scratches the surface, but while I try to figure out just where my career choices (or lack of them) will take me, I never stop. My brain is full of facts interesting and otherwise but the work choices I’ve made seem to end up lacking. Will I attain perfection in anything and will I find a way to make my knowledge earn me a living, or will my constant pursuit just lead me onto more new pastimes that drive my family mad? Can I ever admit to being good at anything or am I doomed to failure because I feel I’m never good enough? Is this the curse of modern day living? So much to learn and so little time. Should I just stop and be content with a life of housework and cooking or should I just concentrate on what I know already? But then life would be boring!

I love architecture, I love history, I love art and crafts and literature. I love meeting new people. I love trying out new things. I just love learning.

So that’s why I’ll never amount to anything!

Belonging: A’Buntainn: Tilhøre

A little while ago, whilst on duty at Caithness Horizons, Thurso in our fabulous little Family History corner, an idea was put forward for some of the Family History Society members to help with a Homecoming Project based around the idea of Belonging and helping clients from Highland Health and Happiness. Being one for a challenge and thinking the project could be fun I volunteered, along with Barbara Hiddleston the Society’s secretary.

There was a moment of panic when a heavy workload threatened to have me pulling out, but thankfully it all came together and the resulting project is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done recently. It’s amazing how people can pull together with a half-formed idea and create something wonderful.

After the initial meetings the project gained a name based around the word “belonging” in three languages – English, Gaelic and Norse to reflect the heritage of Caithness. The intention was to create a journal for each client, full of family information and items that gave each a sense of belonging. Once the formalities were out of the way we had four weeks of fun.

Six clients met up every Friday and by exploring family and what it meant to everyone, along with the expertise of papermaker Joanne Kaar, the end result was both fascinating and beautiful.

On the first week Barbara, Katie (the Health and Happiness co-ordinator) and I guided Charles, Keith, Louise, Deedee, William and Robert. We gathered information on what family meant and what everyone hoped to get from the project. We wrote down names, dates and places and looked at photos and treasured items. That night Barbara and I went home, did a little research and completed a family tree for each of the clients.

The next week we all went through what we had found, Sarah (from A’Chraobh,who made the project possible) scanned photo’s which she sent to Joanne, then everyone drew their own trees and wrote pieces of information that they would like to see in their books.

The last two weeks were set aside for producing artwork, and this is when the real fun began. First of all Joanne showed everyone how to make prints for their journal. We carved pictures into polystyrene and used them to print onto card. Much merriment was had and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves creating some beautiful artwork. Joanne had copied the items from the previous weeks and created one piece booklets for the group to fold; we also made folding books that are a work of art in themselves.

The final week was the creation of the actual journal itself. Everyone chose their favourite colour of cover and secured the pockets into place – this was to be the final resting place for all the items that had been produced over the last few weeks. Joanne also commissioned some postcards to be made using images from the prints, writings and trees that everyone had worked so hard on.

Our last meeting was on Friday 30^th October. There was a presentation allowing everyone to see all the finished work and to see how we had progressed over the weeks. Lunch was provided and photographs were taken. We were all sad to leave the project behind, but the six participants left with their journals and a feeling of accomplishment, along with some new friendships.

If you’d like to see more of what we achieved you can find photos and notes on the

Health and Happiness blog.    http://caithnessconnections.wordpress.com/

And the A’Chraobh website   http://www.achraobh.com/archives/series/thurso

Why not stop by Joanne’s website to see examples of her excellent artwork

http://www.joannebkaar.com/

The Caithness family history society can also be found here  http://www.caithnessfhs.org.uk/

And finally this is where the project took place http://www.caithnesshorizons.co.uk/

The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book!

Way back when, as first year librarianship students we had a discussion on the death of the book. By we I mean a group of students, green around the gills, and a lecturer to whom this subject reared its head every year. The book was dying but we had a vested interest in keeping it alive and we came to the conclusion that computers would make information retrieval quicker and more efficient, but although the book had been doomed for years it would survive and flourish. This was in the 80’s when one of our projects was to build a teletext page with this fabulous new technology, and my dissertation on Local Area Networks needed serious research and visits to specialised companies who were pioneering workable network links for offices and places of education.

The internet was only a few years away…and with it the end of life as we know it.

Fast forward 20 years. I can talk to people I don’t know on the other side of the world – quickly and efficiently building networks for work and pleasure. Information is there at my fingertips and I can use it how I please. I make artwork on a computer, with software freely given by a generous developer in the US then I can send it to a website in Australia to allow more people to see it. The internet is a wonderful thing allowing freedom of speech, a flow of ideas between people who will never meet and recreation for millions.

It also stops our children from developing learning skills and being life aware.

Don’t agree?

Ask a teenager or pre-teen to search for information – they go to the nearest computer. Librarians are being demoted to obsolete in favour of unqualified assistants who only need computer skills. Libraries and depositories are turning digital with textbooks mouldering on the shelves, while even education professionals would rather rely on internet search engines and YouTube. One of the first things educational librarians used to teach their students was that the internet is not policed and nothing should be taken for granted, yet now even professionals turn to sites like Wikipedia for answers…given freely by others who may or may not be professionals in their field. Information and propaganda are not so distant cousins…only one isn’t quite what it seems.

In this digital age there are dangers lurking round every corner, and one of them is the death of reliable information. Chambers in Edinburgh is just about to close its doors for the final time, and other publishing houses around the world are following suit. It’s not the global recession; it’s the digital equivalent of a boa-constrictor. The internet is growing, digesting the information around it, then sitting smugly while the printed word struggles to breathe. Children and young adults are becoming illiterate, a quick information fix is what everyone wants and before you know it the printed word will be relegated to a few independent publishers of fiction who have the money and the passion to continue to fight for the cause.

Still don’t agree? The publishing world is on its knees, each company has to grab the attention of the buying public or it has to diversify…usually into electronic media. The literacy levels of students are falling and most children would rather play on their computer than read a good book.

I’m a dying breed… I want to feel the pages turning, put my feet up and hold a book in my hands. Call me old fashioned but for me reading is a tactile experience, sure I’ll use the internet to talk, to create and to watch, but I live in a house where a bookshelf is a thing to be admired and pondered over. There’s nothing like walking into a bookshop, browsing and coming away with something that has been created by a team of dedicated professionals who took their time over their creation.

Books are vital, books bring employment and books bring knowledge and pleasure.

The book is dead, long live the book.

Mutterings and Musings

Well I finally made it…I have a blog.

Don’s ask me why because I really don’t know.

I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a fractalist, a Taroist, a feltmaker, a papermaker, a genealogist, an indexer, a worrier, a Yorkshire lass living in exile….the list goes on.

This is my own blog;  it won’t revolve around work …just mutterings and musings of a lass who still doesn’t know what it’s all about. There will be Tarot, there will be fractals, there’s bound to be something interesting if you hang on long enough.

If you know me and want me to write about something you think I have an opinion on, well hell, just say. I may take you up on it…I may not. I’m a fickle Gemini

Let the blog begin…

ps…if you’re looking for Hairy Maclary he’s from Donaldson’s Dairy…I don’t think he can write (but his books are damn good!)