Biffo - The Missing Weeks...

I was browsing on-line, as I do when plot-wrangling threatens to

implode my brain, and I came across this, questioning whether putting up posters about your missing cat ever helps you regain the cat.
     It reminded me of my beloved ex-cat, Biffo, and the time he went missing.

     It wasn't long after he moved in with me. I followed the rules for a cat-move. I kept him strictly inside for the requisite two weeks, buttered his paws and gave him cream and tuna, and other treats, designed to convince him that he'd fallen on his paws, and there was nowhere he'd rather be.
     But I had to open the door and let him out eventually, because he'd always had freedom to come and go as he pleased before.
     His first ventures into my back-yard and street went well, and he returned to base for food. And then he went out and didn't return. Not that day, not that night, not the next morning. 

     I knocked on doors and asked neighbours to check their sheds. Still no Biffo.  I concluded that, sadly, Biffo had probably been killed by a car.

But Davy, who was Can-Opener No. 2 (I was No. 3) refused to accept this. He was very attached to Biffo. Davy persuaded me to print off some flyers and we posted them through doors for several streets around.
     The result, after a week, was one phone-call from a concerned man who asked if we'd found our cat yet. He and his wife, he said, would be distraight if they lost their cat, and they felt for us. But no, he'd seen no cat like the one we described.

     Davy still refused to give up. On his insistence - Davy is really the hero of this story - we toured the neighbourhood again, talking to people we met in their gardens, asking if they'd seen our flyer and if they had any news. It was a warm, sunny autumn Saturday, in late October or early November, because the annual barrage of nightly fireworks had been going on for, well, nights.
     We wandered onto a patch of overgrown waste ground that backed onto some gardens, because it was the kind of place that a lost cat might hide during the day, or hunt at dusk. We stood there for some while, talking. Davy seemed sure that Biffo was simply exploring his new area. I argued that he was more likely trying to find his way back to his previous home, and was disorientated in the strange streets.

     We stood there, talking, for some time and a woman came out of her house into her back yard, which we appeared to be staring into. Could she help us, she asked, in that special tone that means: 'What are you up to, you suspicious types?'

     I apologised, and explained that we were looking for our cat. Mollified, she said she'd seen a cat, one she hadn't seen before, sitting on the fence posts at the edge of the waste ground, staring into the scrub. In other words, a cat hunting.
     I asked what the cat had looked like. 'It was a big cat,' she said. Now, on seeing Biffo for the first time, people said either, 'Oh what a beautiful cat,' or 'Oh, what a big cat.' Sometimes, both. I asked for more detail and the description - grey, striped, big bushy tail - all fitted Biffo.
     We thanked the woman, and returned to the road. I was thinking hard. A lost and scared cat, forced to find its own food, would want, I thought, somewhere quiet and hidden to lie up and hide during the day; somewhere there were plenty of small mice and other little creatures (and Biffo did catch mice and rats) and somewhere that people put out food.
     Assuming that he was continuing on down the hill, was he going to find anywhere like that?
     Yes, he was. Near the bottom of that very hill was the house where a good friend of mine lived. It was a corner plot, raised up above street level. Most of its long garden consisted of a steep bank sloping down to the street, thickly grown with trees, bushes and briars. There were apple trees, and plum, hawthorn and wild roses: a miniature urban wood. My friend had never tried to do anything with it: had simply left it to itself.
     She's also keen on wild-life and birds, and puts out food and water, every single night. She makes up sandwiches for the foxes (I kid you not) and sets out cat-food for the hedgehogs. There are peanuts for the badgers. If Biffo was still alive, I reckoned he would have sniffed out my friend's place - and once he'd found it, he'd stay there.
     I knew my friend had guests that afternoon, so didn't interrupt her, but I phoned her as soon as I could and described Biffo. A very large cat, a tabby, mostly grey but with a sandy undercoat. He has the look of a wildcat, I said, with a very thick, bushy grey tail, ringed with black. Amber eyes. Very upright, pointed ears. A big fluffy snow-white 'shirt-front.' Big paws. Hind legs longer than his front legs.
     That was Saturday evening. The very next morning, early, the

phone rang and it was my friend. She asked me to describe my missing cat again. Then she said, 'I got up last night to watch the foxes - ' Which she often does, because she's a life-long insomniac. 'And there was a cat just like the one you described eating from the hedgehog's bowl.'
     So I phoned Davy, and he grabbed his cat-basket and drove over immediately. As soon as his car pulled onto my friend's drive, Biffo emerged from the bushes, wailing. A very bright cat, he recognised individual car engines, and he knew rescue had arrived.
     There was no palaver, that day, about catching him and getting him into the cat-basket. Davy said he almost threw himself inside, purring with relief and gratitude. You know, freedom is one thing - the sky your roof, and your candle a star and all that. But a nice warm sofa and as much cat-food as you can eat is not something to give up lightly.
     After that adventure - he was on the loose for three weeks, with fireworks exploding every night - he stayed much closer to home, though he still spent most of every day outside.
     He's been gone for good since 2010.  I still miss him. In fact, as I lay in bed the other night, I heard him licking his paws beside me, as I did immediately after he died.
     So, did the flyers succeed in reuniting us with our missing cat? No. But Davy's determination to look for him, and asking questions around the neighbourhood - and my doing a bit of writerly imagining on, 'How would a cat think?' - led us to recovering him. And to eight further years of very happy cat life.

     He's welcome to come back in the night, and lick his paws and wipe his ears as often as he likes.

Clowns and Green Men

         Did nothing this week, except the usual noodling around with blogs, emails and so on. Well, did write the beginning of a new story that I promised my agent.
          I thought I'd put up the clown mask I've been playing around with. I partly painted it with white acrylic, but as I don't have much paint and no brush (I used my fingers) things haven't gone very far. The lips are coloured with a felt-tipped pen, but I'm not happy with them. Acrylic would be better, but I was so overwhelmed with the choice of paints that I ended up not buying any. The clown is based on portraits of Grimaldi - I wanted to avoid the Ronald MacDonald look - and his hair should be blue. There should be bright red triangles painted on his cheeks too. I don't know if I'll bother to finish him.
          I started playing around with the Green Man too. My 'studio is one corner of my kitchen table, and while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil, I seize bits of paper and card and work on it for ten minutes at a time.  It started like this - 

A cheap plastic mask of tragedy, which I coated with vaseline. After lots of paste and torn paper, it turned into this - 

This detail of the top left hand corner shows the cardboard holly leaves, and a crumpled paper sycamore leaf,

It's all made out of old newspapers, cardboard boxes, unwanted junk mail. At the moment I'm trying to make a small bird's nest by layering paper around a small (greased) measuring cup. As I want to keep the whole thing light, I'll have to find something I can model acorns and hazel-nuts around. I am looking at household objects and bits of rubbish with a speculative eye.

          From Green Men to Blue Cats...

English Words

A tunky pig?

          As a child, I often heard the expression, ‘fat as a tunky pig.’  My aunt’s over-fed dog, for instance, was often said to be, ‘fat as a tunky pig.’

          I asked my father (who I regarded as a walking encyclopedia) how a tunky pig differed from other pigs, and was astonished when he didn’t know.  (But, to his credit, he admitted it.)  “I suppose,” he said, “it was a breed of pig.”

          I left it at that until, years later, I was researching my book, Christopher Uptake (available here, as an e-book.)  This involved finding out about the Catholicism and saints of the 16^th century, and I happened to read about StAnthony the Great.  His emblem was a pig; and he came to be regarded as a saint who looked kindly upon all pigs.

Christopher Uptake by Susan Price

          It’s recorded by John Stowe that, in Elizabethan I’s reign, and probably earlier, market officials would not allow ‘unwholesome’ or underweight pigs to be sold.  Instead, they were marked by having their ears slit, and turned loose, to feed on the rubbish in the city streets.  Since all pigs were considered to be in St Anthony’s care, they were known as ‘St Anthony’s pigs,’ and left unharmed. They thrived, and soon learned to follow people who had food, making a bit of a nuisance of themselves.

          So, Stowe says, if someone pestered you for a favour, they were said to be following you ‘like a tantony pig.’  And someone who obviously fed themselves well was, ‘as fat as a tantony pig.’

          I had forgotten all about my childhood puzzlement, but when I read this, light broke in upon me.  “As fat as a tunky pig!”  ‘Tantony’, corrupted and contracted from ‘St. Anthony’ had suffered further in being passed down through generations of Protestants and – being my family – athiests.  Protestant athiests, if you will.

          Since Stowe explained its meaning in the 1500s, presumably it was an expression which was beginning to puzzle people even then.  I’m amazed by how far it staggered on down the centuries – 400 years, at least -  in frequent use by people who didn’t know what a ‘tunky pig’ was.  They probably just liked the sound of it.

          But words and phrases do survive, much better than people.  Perhaps they’re what Dawkins would call ‘memes.’

          Take the expression, ‘down in the dumps,’ meaning ‘depressed.’   How old would you say that was?  I’d assumed that it was 19^th Century, perhaps a bit later – the kind of phrase found in one of those beautifully drawn Punch cartoons with a novella for a caption.   I was astonished to find it in Christopher’s Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, written in 1589 or 1590:

BARABAS. Go tell 'em the Jew of Malta sent thee, man. ..... Why, how now, Don Mathias, in a dump?

          And that racy 1970s expression ‘Come back to my pad’?  - 16^th Century beggars’ cant.  They carried with them a rolled up sleeping-pad, which they often left outside towns, in lonely barns, while they made forays.  At night, they ‘went back to their pad.’  Why this re-surfaced in the ‘70s is anybody’s guess.

          That word, ‘cant’, which my Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘language peculiar to a specified group: thieves’ cant… Origin, 16^th century, in sense "singing", later "whining speech", as of a beggar.'

         My mother often used the word.  She’d come in crossly, saying of someone she’d met, “Her kept me canting above half-hour and I’ve so much to do!”  Or, “Standing here canting woe mek the babby a new frock!”  For her, it meant 'gossip' or 'idle talk.'

          Coming from the Black Country, where the dialect is all that remains of Middle English, I learned a lot of very old words, which were used casually, in everyday speech.  ‘Wench’ for instance.  There was nothing ‘humorous’, as the OED puts it, or self-consciously quaint about our use of the word.  Nor did it have any sense of ‘prostitute’ as my OED insists the word originally meant.  It simply meant ‘girl’ or ‘young woman’ – just as the northern ‘lass’ does (Old Norse: ‘Laskura’, unmarried.)

          ‘Our Wench’ meant ‘my sister’, as ‘Our Kid’ meant ‘my brother’.

         An editor once refused to allow me to use ‘Our Kid’ in this sense in my book, Twopence A Tub, set in the 19^th Century Black Country.  ‘Kid’ was ‘an Americanism’, she said.  I didn’t believe it then, and I see that my latest OUD (2009) gives its derivation as ‘Middle English, from Old Norse kith.’  As in ‘kith and kin’, I guess.  Ha!  Writer, 1: Editor 0.

          When, as an ‘A’ level student, I read of the king’s ‘reechy kisses’ in Hamlet, I didn’t need to look at the notes, because my mother was always wiping us down while exclaiming, “Yo’m reesty, reechy, riffy, dairty, like some kid nobody doe own!”

          When I came across ‘gledy’ (fiery) in Chaucer, I was already familiar with it because of the often heard description of people with a raucous laugh or voice: ‘like a gleed under a door.’  This, it had been explained to me, was when a small piece of burnt coal, a gleed, became trapped under a planking door and was scraped across uncarpeted, bare tiles or stone flags when the door was opened or closed.  The noise was painful.  So I knew that ‘gledy’ was associated with fire and burning.

          One more Black Country word from my childhood: malkin.  I used to think it was spelled ‘mawkin’ because that’s how it was pronounced.  It was often used affectionately, but means, ‘idiot, fool, silly person.’  I thought of it as ‘slang’ and never bothered to look it up – but I was flipping through my parents’ dictionary one day, and happened to see it, as the last entry at the bottom of a page: malkin.  It isn’t in my OED Concise, but I remember that the old dictionary gave its definition as ‘simpleton’ and said it was derived from Old English.       

...Choose me,

You English words? 

 

...But though older far

Than oldest yew, -

As our hills are, old, -

Worn new

Again and again:

Young as our streams

After rain:

And as dear

As the earth which you prove

That we love. 

 

Edward Thomas.

 

          I'm always delighted to learn new dialect words, if you know any!

 

So What Do You Do In Schools Anyway?

In full story-telling flow: 'Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum!'

          A friend asked me this the other day.  It’s not the first time I’ve been asked it.  My friends seem deeply puzzled by the amount of time I spend in schools.

          I can understand, I suppose.  After all, unlike many other writers, I’ve never been a teacher.  I have no qualifications.  I know lots of little bits of odd things, but I can’t claim to be an expert in any one subject.

          My partner, Davy, who phoned while I was writing this blog, insists that I put in here that my education came from ‘voracious reading’ (his words.)  He insists that I add this, with his usual relentless Scottish persistence, in case people think that I’m "thick and only managed to write a book by a fluke. You shouldn’t keep telling people you’re unqualified, you should stop that now."

          Sixty-odd books, Davy?  Some fluke.  But now, when he reads this (and he will read it, just to check, I ken the cheukster) here is his correction, [almost] as dictated over the phone.

          Despite being thick and flukish, I’m always telling friends that I’m off to some school in Yorkshire, or South Wales, or Scotland.  I’ve even been into schools in Germany, where one boy asked me breathlessly (in beautiful English) whether I’d met the Queen.  He and his classmates gasped with shock when I replied, “No: and I don’t want to. I think Britain should be a Republic.”  Seeing astonished expressions on all sides, I added, “Not everybody in Britain adores the monarchy.”

Soon to be available for download

          The head thanked me later, saying that was exactly why he wanted British visitors – to counter the impression of Britain that his pupils received from television and magazines. (The ever protective and vigilant Davy doesn’t like this part either.  He thinks I’ll lose my monarchist readership: as if I ever had one.  Honestly, love the man, but if I listened to him, I’d never open my mouth or write a word. And when Davy reads this, he will cry – his constant refrain – ‘Suzzie, you never do as you’re told, Suzzie!’)

         Countering impressions received… That’s pretty much the answer to my friends’ question.  As a writer in school, I – and other writers, such as my SAS friends – are giant teaching aids. There are thousands of children who’ve never given much thought to where books come from, or who think they’re only written by – well, by people like the Queen, perhaps: distant, rich people with private educations and plummy accents. And then I turn up – an ordinary woman, with a Black Country accent, and read from the books I’ve written.

Tales of the Underworld on Amazon

          It makes writing a book suddenly seem like something ordinary people can do - something that living people you can talk to can do.  I tell them about the slum I was born in, and the council estate I was raised on, the comprehensive I attended.

          I tell stories, which I love – and because I read an exciting story aloud from one of my own books – well, suddenly, books are exciting and worth investigating.

          And that’s what writers are doing in schools near you.

          Here, you'll find SAS members, including me, reading from their books.  And I daresay one or two might two might pop up in the comments.

          Blott's come down from the roof....

 

CREATIVE HEADACHES

A 'ghost drum'

           I’m in the process of turning the third Ghost World book, Ghost Dance, into a kindle.

          This has involved me closely reading all three books again, some 20 years after writing them, an odd experience.  I’m relieved to find that they haven’t made me flinch with embarrassment, or want to entirely rewrite them (though I have changed the odd word.)  In fact, immodest though it may be, I think they’re good.  If you like tales of shamans in dark, frozen Czardoms, of shape-shifting, wolves, witchcraft, spirit-travelling, and barking mad czars – these are your bag.

          But the books puzzle me.  I’m an atheist (I tell myself.)  I’m hard-headed and sceptical, me.  I don’t believe in gods, or other worlds, or witches, or ghosts, or any such nonsense.

          And yet I wrote these stories, which are all about spirit-travelling and following the Ghost Road to the Ghost World.  I may have taken some of the ideas from myth and folklore, but I chose to inhabit these characters and these worlds.  I could have written a story set in the solid, hard-headed world around me. But I didn’t.

          It wasn’t just a case of ‘making up a story’ either.  I remember, quite clearly, the compulsion I felt to write these books.  ‘Ghost Drum’ took me three years, and exhausted me, but I couldn’t give it up.  And as soon as it was finished, I wrote Ghost Song, which is Ghost Drum’s mirror-image.  In ‘Drum’, on midwinter night, a female shaman demands a baby-girl from her mother, and is given her. In ‘Song’, on midsummer night, a male shaman demands a baby boy from his father, and is refused.

As soon as Song was finished, I had to write Ghost Dance, driven by a nagging feeling of unfinished business.  I had wanted the barking mad Czar to be a central character in Drum – but he was pushed aside by other characters.  I felt I still had to write his book – and, in Dance, Czar Grozni is truly mad, bad and dangerous even if you don’t know him.

          I’ve long been drawn to the theory that the two walnut-like halves of our brains operate as individual personalities.  I think the one we’re less aware of – which has more time to put its feet up and day-dream – supplies all the best and most original of our ideas.  It knows what we really want.  It’s the ‘muse’ which whispers in artists’ ears.  (I’ve written more about my ‘muse’ here.)

          Some day I must blog about what I learned from Lucy Coats about ‘creative napping’, otherwise known as ‘a guided spirit-journey.’  One half of me finds it deeply intriguing and useful.  The other half is absolutely furious that it works; and the two halves end up scrapping like cats.

          One half of me is hard-headed and sceptical, all right.  Wants a reason and an explanation for everything.  It makes a great editor.

          The other half, the one that dreams up the ideas and images – well, that half is, and has always been, drawn towards the ghostly, the strange, the fantastic, the inexplicable, the numinous.

          There’s the ‘creative dynamic’ for you.  Pass the aspirin.

BLOT

Search Amazon.com Electronics for kindle 3 
                            

LET'S MAKE THE FILM RIGHT HERE! In Our Kitchen...

£1.71  Ghost Dance by Susan Price  $2.99

          I met up with my brothers last week, and mentioned that I was days away from publishing my third book on kindle, GHOST DANCE, the third book in the Ghost World sequence.

          Adam looked at Andrew and said, “We ought to make a trailer for them!”  Andrew enthusiastically agreed, and the rest of the afternoon was spent in planning how it could be done for no money at all.

          I never asked them to do it!  It was, I swear, entirely their own idea.  For all the attempts I’ve been making to let the world know that my books are on the kindle, making a trailer had never occurred to me.

          But, both my brothers love films, and they’re both artists.  (Andrew, the older, has worked as an artist for a computer games firm, and does the book covers for my kindle books; and Adam has published cartoons, and draws the Blot cartoons.) They said it would be a fun way of teaching themselves some new programmes and techniques.

          There followed a long discussion of whether to use stills, or some kind of puppets, or animated paper cut-outs.  What dissolves would be best.  “Can we get Alan (our cousin) to play some music for us?”

           They are going to meet up this Thursday, to draw up a story-board.

          I don’t know if it will come to anything, but I’m agog.  I’m even prepared to disturb the moths in my purse and buy them a camcorder (though the last I heard they were planning to borrow my aunt’s.  Keep it in the family is our motto.  This is why my Twitter name is @priceclan.)
          Film trailers are nothing new of course.  My friend and fellow Scattered Author, Katherine Langrish, has made a trailer for her book DARK ANGELS I love it (and the book) and played the trailer to my brothers for educational and inspirational purposes.

          I think Kath’s short film captures the atmosphere of her book brilliantly, and I’m impressed by its quality.  If Kath had told me she’d paid large splodges of moolah to have it made professionally, I wouldn’t have doubted it, but in fact she made it herself, with help from her family.

          I’ll be thrilled if my family can come up with something as good.  You can bet I’ll keep you posted on the progress of PriceClan Studios.

        

And here's Blott -

There are more Blot cartoons at www.susanpriceauthor.com

Introducing Blott

          For some time now, I've been trying to think of something to make my blog a little different, especially a little different from the blogs of my SAS friends.  Others can review books better than me, and since I seldom emerge from my cave except to snarl at people in the supermarket, I’m not the one to dish the writing goss.

           I got the idea of a cartoon.  It was to be based around a writer.  I thought about introducing my computers as other characters – weeny little netbook, middle-sized laptop and great big desktop.  I liked the idea, but I didn’t think I could actually do it.

          I can draw a bit, but I’m out of practice and anyway, there’s a big difference between an ordinary drawing and a cartoon with some style.  I didn’t think I could draw a cartoon that was any good.

          And jokes.  I’m not that good at jokes.  I didn’t think I could come up with enough.

          And then there’s time.  I’m writing books, writing proposals, turning my back–list into e-books, and being an RLF fellow… I didn’t think I could produce a cartoon as well.

          Still, the idea wouldn’t go away, and in the pub one night, I mentioned it to my brother and sister-out-law.  My brother Adam was interested.  He is a cartoonist – has published cartoons, and been paid for them.  He had developed a rather stylish cat and mouse.  And despite having more than enough to be getting on with himself – holding down a job and studying with the OU – he volunteered to produce the cartoon.

          So Blott was born – and I should say no more and let Blott speak for himself.  I didn’t lay down too strict a brief – I see no point in dictating to someone else’s creativity.  Enough that it had to fit in with a writer’s blog.  I’d quite like the computers to be characters, but have no idea if they will ever be…  The sister-out-law, as is her wont, has supplied some brilliant ideas – as I’ve no doubt the other brother will (but he’s designing the covers for my e-books).  It’s a cooperative cartoon!

          First one to be posted this weekend.  All of us @priceclan hope you enjoy it.