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September 2004
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I am in a castle. Turrets, moat, gates, ironmongery, outbuildings, falcons, water-rats, one large black dog. At night, the stars stud the sky with silver. By day, the sun is hot but not fierce, and the old orchard is hung with fruit.
La France Profond. An hour north of Clermont Ferrand. Three hours south of Paris. My dearest friends bought a chateau here two years ago, and they have just spent the summer holidays with their kids, my godchildren. Unfortunately they misunderstood the date on their Pet Passport, so the huge Newfoundland Dog, Un Nouveau Terre, called Belle, can't go home until October 8th. They best solution seemed to be for me to come and have a quiet working space while feeding the dog.
So here I am, with no car, just a bicycle.
Last night we were discussing what the modern deadly sins might be, along with the famous ones thought up by the Church, like Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, Avarice, etc. I thought Haste might be a good one. Someone else thought Triviality. What do you think?
Haste is something I am guilty of at hone - in the sense that I am naturally a multi-tasking sort of a creature, but that can mean just trying to do too much, never having enough time - the necessary time to stop and stare, to dally, to play, all that stuff, which I know is so important, and yet I still get it wrong.
I went to interview Philip Pullman just before I came away - (it won't be out until November, and it will be on the site at the beginning of November because the November issue of the glossy magazine Harpers and Queen will be out mid-Oct ) - anyway, he said he felt the same. As has he become so well known, every kind of pressure and demand has increased, and making time to the thing he wants to do, needs to do, must do - WRITE -, gets harder and harder. This made me feel better, because it certainly does get harder.
Did you know that 75% of the world's population has never heard a ringing tone? So the next time we are rushing to make that call, it might be worth remembering that most of the planet can't be telephoned at all.
Haste... I understand it when it's about packing in life because life is so short, but hurrying through life when life is so short is like hurtling down the motorway at 100mph; everything passes in a blur, then suddenly, that's it. The end. Death.
I was forty five this year, half way through, I reckon, and thank you to EVERYONE who sent me cards and messages, especially all the folks on the Message Board who sent me a really lovely card signed by people all over the world. I was very touched.
It was a great birthday - I went to the posh opera at Glyndebourne to see Carmen, and stayed the night in a nice country hotel in the Lewes, famous of course for Charleston, Rodmell, Virginia Woolf et al.
It was a good day to slow down, and now that I am here, I will find a different rhythm, or rather, re-find the rhythm natural to me. That was one reason for choosing not to hire a car here. The bike will keep me fit, stop me hauling too much from the shops, and help to learn about the area. Sure, I've got my email here, but I don't care if the electricity goes off, because the real work, writing, can be done by hand, same as it ever was.
Triviality. What about that? Do we trivialise our lives? Do we get lost in the trivial at the expense of the real? The media does good work reporting world news, but we'd have to admit that most of the rest of what fills papers and TV, is not the stuff of sanity. How much celebrity gossip do we need?
A list of what is important to ourselves, and then a list of what we think is important in the world can be an interesting exercise. How much of our time and resources do we devote to what we would say is important - both personally and politically - and how much of our time do we spend on trivia?
Of course, what's important to me may not be important to you, different priorities are fine, but I think we should make intelligent choices. The fact is that a lot of what we do isn't a choice at all, intelligent or stupid, we just do it passively, and wonder where the day has gone.
How many days in a life?
And when it's gone, it's gone.
I can hear a woodpecker tapping away like me. Maybe that woodpecker is writing its memoirs. The woodpecker can hear me tapping too. I am right by its tree, high up, in a top turret room. This sympathetic Morse code makes me feel part of the life of the tree. It is easier here to belong to other life forms, other ways of life. I am aware of all the noises, the scents, the temperature. In the city, we spend a lot of energy shutting life out - the noise, the aggression, the crowded feel. It is such a relief to let life in, and even as I write those words, I wonder how bonkers we are, making a life that is anti-life; a life where life has to be shut out.
The kids have been here for 5 weeks without a TV, without videos or computers or even a radio, and they have had a great time. I love them for their openness, for their imagination, and I love their parents for allowing their kids this freedom. More of that in my article for Harpers in this month's JOURNALISM.
Of course, their father and mother can both work away from a desk, and that is a big help, but the family is not rich. To buy the chateau they sold their London house and moved into a flat. It's a bit of a squash, especially with a huge dog, but they wanted to remind themselves that there is more to life than city life or even English life. They made a choice about resources and values. For them, anyway, it was the right thing to do. For the kids, it's a miracle.
So here I go, into the quiet days and quiet nights. For those of you near a cinema, you have to see Richard Eyre's new film STAGE BEAUTY. It is wonderful.
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