Victoria Clayton

Third and Last Attempt to Keep a Blog

victoriaclayton — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:48:54 +0000

Having looked at a few blogs I realise that photographs and not much text are the most enjoyable…for me, anyway. I’ve always found it difficult to be brief with pen in hand, so I hope this approach will reform me. Here is a photograph of my front door, a suitable beginning.

The date stone (unreadable because it’s only about the tenth photo I’ve ever taken) is 1633. In this year (for those who were staring out of the window during lessons on the Civil War) Charles I’s enemies were just grumbling in dark corners. Charles’s second son (James II) and Samuel Pepys … who were to have so much to do with each other … were born, 8 months apart. Also in this year the Pope obliged Gallileo, under threat of torture, to retract his assertion that the earth orbited the sun rather than the other way round. (In 1992 the Vatican admitted they had been wrong.)

Our house, though called The Manor House, is really just a farmhouse. The double height porch is typical of the early 17th century. Traditionally the little room above was where stewards or agents did their book-keeping. For 13 years I’ve been meaning to remove the winter jasmine around the door because it’s too rampant and dreary for 46 weeks of the year. But then, in the coldest weather the little yellow stars come out so I let it live. Also it covers a bodged bit of 20th century grouting. Not an impossible eyesore to correct and I can’t think why I haven’t. Could this be the year? The front door is painted in Farrow and Ball’s Castle Grey.

New novel ‘Stormy Weather’ now on KIndle

victoriaclayton — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:38:02 +0000

I am delighted to report that in the absence of a print edition Stormy Weather is now available as a Kindle e-book from: http://tinyurl.com/6mhg8y2

I am sorry that no UK publisher has seen its way to publish an English print edition.

Best wishes to you all.

Fowl Freedom

victoriaclayton — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:59:03 +0000

It’s been warm enough (just) over Easter for me to let the hens out of their pen. Warm enough for me, I mean, to spend more than a few minutes in the garden until rain stops play. To my delight these girls, instead of shunning humankind which has given them such a raw deal in the battery house for the last twelve months , cluster about my feet and follow me closely around the garden as though they are Israelites and I am Moses. They clucked politely when I showed them the hellebore border …rather a grand name for a raised semi-circle of soil and leaf mould but oh, how exquisite their flowers are, pink, white, crimson, purple, yellow, blotched, speckled and plain, interspersed with blue anemone blanda and pink corydalis Beth Evans and hardy cyclamen …really, though I say it myself it does look pretty …anyway the hens were appreciative. They practically crowed when I showed them the canal we put in four years ago, thirty six feet by ten feet and growing only waterlilies (not showing above the surface yet of course). And they admired with coos and chirps my new crabapple borders …six a side, grown in squares of box all from seedlings and cuttings, interpsersed with squares of catmint but at this time of year filled with bulbs, pink, cream and purple hyacinthsand anemones which give way to narcissus Icewings (to coincide with the pinky white crab apple blossom but in fact they come out too early) followed byCarnival de Nice, a wonderful red and white striped double tulip together with Uncle Tom a dark red paeony flowered tulip. All supposed to be like a ‘flowery mead’ only of course, as is always the case with gardening, the effect does not quite come off until you have made adjustments. The pink hyacinths (Fondant)are a little sickly and, after three years of looking at them and thinking this, I’ve decided that nothing will do but to take them out and replace them with a paler pink, DAMN! Anyway the hens thought the effect lovely and were warm in their praise but their enthusiasm for my horticultural schemes paled to nothing when I began to weed and incidentally dug up worms. They screamed with ecstasy and all five wanted to stand on the spot I was working on. Georgie, my adopted stray with a long black-and-white coat, exactly like a sheepdog but cat-shaped, wanted to terrorise them because HE likes to lie on the plant I am clipping or weeding round. He crawled forward and pounced only to receive a sharp peck on the nose. These maltreated hens have the insoucience and aplomb of robust tiptop mental health specimens. They are an advertisement for imprisonment and torture. I see that I should have coralled my children into dank gloomy sheds with straw palliases and naked light bulbs instead of investing heavily in luminous stars, revolving pirate bedside lamps, Ninja Turtle duvet covers and My Little Pony blankets. I should have fed them on stale bread instead of Curlywurlies and alphabet potatoes. Then adulthood could only be a feast of fun and indulgence and delight.

Vegetarians, you may come out of the closet.

victoriaclayton — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:54:31 +0000

But no trumpets, no self-congratulatory smiles. Just go quickly and quietly to a place of safety and await further instructions. Recently I’ve read several newspaper articles about the ecological sin of meat-eating, about how you can feed thirty-nine and a half people on the grain needed to rear one cow. I’ve no idea if that’s accurate. But I dare to say that environmentalism is here to stay. And now I’m finding more articles about the cruelty involved in meat-eating. Mm. I read The Times and The Spectator, not because I’m right-wing …I hover in a no-man’s land of doubt and confusion, changing my mind a dozen times a day …but because the prose is slightly less annoying. But aren’t these organs usually ( I’m not asserting an opinion here) read by middle-brow, opera-going, Latin-to-be-taught-in-schools supporters , whereas vegetarianism is commonly associated with wacky, hairy, rough-brown-pottery-using lefties who educate their children at home on Ginsberg and Gurdjieff. I’m detecting a bit of slippage. For many years to be a vegetarian has been to annoy all sensible, practical people who’ve got a life and who know perfectly well that man is a carnivore and that Nature is red in tooth and claw and if we didn’t eat meat the cows and sheep we enjoy looking at in fields wouldn’t exist. Let’s face it vegetarians are a pain. No, really. They insist on taking a sentimental anthropomorphic view of animals that wouldn’t hesitate to murder their own offspring if food stockswere low. And vegetarians are a downright nuisance to the restaurant owner and the hostess/cook . What’s even more annoying is that even though they’re a bit of a joke with their hummous and rice cakes and butternut squashes, they’re laying claim to some kind of delusive moral superiority. When I meet someone who announces with a sanctimonious smirk that they are vegetarian I take a hard look to see if they’re chippy, censorious, drum-beating, flag-waving individuals, who are going to quote poetry at me (their own), try to convert me to an obscure religion or lecture me about what a bad mother I am. Which is odd because for thirty years I’ve been a vegetarian myself.

Only Happy Hens Here

victoriaclayton — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:48:04 +0000

I hope so anyway. They arrived yesterday a few hours after leaving the battery farm, five girls, rather short on wing and breast feathers and with pale floppy combs, always a sign of ill-health. We have named them Grace, Mercy, Patience, Hope and Charity. Puritan names but in this house indulgence reigns. The hens were utterly bemused of course by finding themselves in an eglu-cube and no doubt yearned for the cosy familiarity of the battery cage. But when I carried each one into the run, though obviously perplexed by the texture and greenness of grass, some instinct led them to start pecking. It was a Fidelio moment. I’d forgotten how delightful is the croaky crooning sound hens make when enjoying themselves. They stepped delicately about, turning their heads to the horizontal to look up at the sky, down at the grass, both at the same time obviously and started nervously at the coos and whistles and wing flapping of the wild birds whose feeders are also in the orchard. The girls weren’t interested in the food or water (worrying) and had no idea about putting themselves to bed when it got dark. I had to crawl into the run and catch them. Though the run is reputedly foxproof, our fox comes for food every night and I think the sight of his beautiful but unmistakably predatory face staring at them through the bars would have finished off these poor traumatised hens. This morning, when the door of the house was opened, two of them came out into the run more or less straight away but the others had to be manually assisted. Now, 5 pm, after a day that began with heavy snow and then became brilliantly sunny, they are all eating, drinking and exploring and three of them have laid an egg!

eglu-cube

victoriaclayton — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:18:20 +0000

I cannot read the word ‘Blog’ without excoriatingl feelings of guilt. I am just not a diarist. But I always feel frustrated when other people say they can’t change as this is patently untrue. So here goes.
I’ve been told I should write about my lifestyle so that ought to be easy enough, hm! I live in a seventeenth century manor house in Northamptonshire. The date stones say 1633 and 1665 and the reason I like it so much is that it has no later additions. No huge Victorian wings built for servants. It has never been a grand house lived in by rich people and this is a great part of its charm. It’s manageable, just about, by two people. The garden is 1.7 acres, also manageable by us. We have no gardener. I’ve started the garden from scratch sweeping away what was here before and creating a seventeenth century one, more or less, with yew,holly and box topiary. Nothing too ambitious so far but I have plans. Not to make this post too long, I’ll describe what I’ve done in more detail later (?) My latest excitement is an eglu-cube which I bought the other day in a fit of wild extravagance, having wanted one ever since they were introduced a few years ago. A fox comes into our garden every night so I need something sturdy and proof against those digging paws. The green eglu-cube has just been delivered and looks fabulous in the orchard, quite a small area containing apple, pear, damson, mulberry and quince trees. The cube is truly an ingenious design, easy to clean (I hope) and a nice place for the hens to be. See the Omlet website. Only the shattering cost could possibly deter the aspiring hen-keeper. On Saturday I go to fetch five hens from the Ex-Battery Hen Welfare Trust. I’ve chosen to have these partly because I hate intensive farming and partly because I think I shall feel less guilty about them having to be in a run most of the time and not free-ranging. The thing is that these hens are considered spent and would be slaughtered if I didn’t take them and being on grass in the cool, so their combs can grow properly red, and being able to grow feathers and so on and having room to move about has to be better than their lives before. And when I’m spending all day in the garden they can be let out to roam. I’ve seen the fox, or different ones, in our garden during the day so absolute vigilance is essential. I’m so excited at the thought of keeping hens again after a break of eleven years. More when I’ve got them. And can I just say a huge thankyou to those readers who’ve left messages on my blog to be rudely ignored by me in my guilty, head-in-the-sand mode and I’m going to answer them next time. But I really am grateful, believe me!

Writing about the Seventies

victoriaclayton — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:37:03 +0000

Caroline asks why I set my novels in the Seventies. Good question and one I’ve asked myself occasionally, without getting a proper answer. My first novel Out Of Love was set in 1969 and the next in, as far as I remember, 1972. I briefly reintroduced the heroine Diana (or Daisy) from the first one so that readers would know what had happened to her and I’ve continued that pattern ever since, which means the novels must have a chronological progression. (The work in hand is set in 1983). Actually, I think I did this because I longed to see and hear my heroines again, however briefly, because when you’ve worked on a book for a long time you get deeply attached to your characters and you miss them painfully when the book is finished. How absurd is that? Several years ago I met a literary agent at a party. We talked about him, of course so he never knew I was a writer. (I say that with amusement not bitterness). He told me that all novelists had to be unbalanced because sane people could not stick working for such long periods in such isolation, weaving so many thousands of words without feedback. Well, perhaps he’s right. I don’t know.

So why did I start with 1969? One reason is that I didn’t want to comment on contemporary popular culture, which could have tipped over into the journalistic tone of some novels that have been enormously successful but which I don’t like much. Also as I’m rather bossy by nature I was anxious to keep myself out of it as far as possible for fear of repelling my readers, which is why I write in the first person. Of course it is all ME, it must be, but I THINK I’ve become someone else, Marigold or Viola or Freddie, when I’m writing. You get a feeling of detachment when writing retrospectively which is enticing, a sort of freedom, as though you’ve got a bird’s eye view. And of course the ghastly truth is that I was young myself in the Seventies. Though I don’t feel a day older than twenty-seven the fact is that cultural trends nowadays look pretty thin and unsatisfying to me and I don’t know that I can be bothered much about Pete Doherty, Wife Swap or Coldplay. Perhaps I’m missing something. On the other hand, when I was in my late teens and early twewnties, I knew Syd Barratt of Pink Floyd fame. I thought him amiable and good-looking but he didn’t strike me as being extraordinarily wonderful, a demi-god, so this could just be a question of taste. Or lack of it. I’m being disingenuous. Of course I don’t mean that.

I still haven’t found a satisfactory answer to Caroline’s question. Perhaps it is that a novel set in the past seems like an enclosed, discrete world in a way that one set in the present day can’t quite do, and it is finding the passport to that world, over which I have absolute control, that draws me into the madness of solitary word-spinning.

The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift

victoriaclayton — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:33:23 +0000

This book was Book of the Week on Radio 4 a month or two ago. It was abridged of course so it is much better to buy it, as I did. It is a hardback with an ENVIABLY attractive cover so is well worth ten pounds. It is about gardens, yes, but so much more. A little journey with a mind of large compass. What could be more satisfying? Being a gardening fanatic I went to The Dower House of Morville Hall to see the garden, whose evolution Dr Swift writes about so alluringly. It did not disappoint. If weeds upset you, don’t go. It was romantically wild but you could still see what its creator had in mind. That is what I liked so much, the divurgations of a mind stuffed with interesting facts and associations laid out in flower beds, hedges and trees. I could imagine its creator lying in bed watching the dawn creep in, thinking ‘Yes, the path shall be like this. I shall plant that there. When money permits I shall build a temple, a canal, a fountain.’ It is not a large garden, perhaps an acre and a half, so easily held in the mind in detail. As it was raining I had a cup of tea in the kitchen. Dr Swift made me a pot of Lapsang Souchong. An absurd English reserve came over me. I was too shy to say I had read the book and enjoyed it for fear of being the hundreth person to gush in the identical words and phrases, which was silly of me. An author can never have too much praise! Instead we had a brief chat about roses and I resolved to make another visit. I do hope I will.

Juvenilia (sp)

victoriaclayton — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:12:12 +0000

My husband has pointed out that I can’t spell juvenilia …oh well, I did say I had a poor education. Also that my last post will offend publishers, teachers and politicians and all other sensitive people. But, as I say, there are those who do not deserve to be called lazy, moronic, dim and so forth and they know who they are.

Juvenalia and Age-Banding

victoriaclayton — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:53:16 +0000

When I read in The Times that Frank Cottrell Boyce thinks the sentences in E.Nesbit’s ‘The Story of The Treasure Seekers’ and ‘The New Treasure Seekers’ may be too long and the language too antiquated for today’s children I am plunged into gloom. I remember reading those books as a child without difficulty and loving them. Clearly he did too. Were we infant phenomena? No. Speaking for myself, I was of average intelligence and had an ordinary State educationuntil the age of 12 when I went to stupid girls’ boarding school and thereafter learned practically nothing. What little knowledge and understanding I have since acquired was gained through reading. What a disservice we do our children and our children’s children by our feeble acquiescence to the dim and lazy teaching establishment and the even more moronic standards of politicians. What I am coming to here, via a characteristic rant, is the question of age banding (i.e. this book is suitable for ages 5-7) on children’s books, currently being debated. Philip Pullman is owed huge gratitude by the entire population of this country and for generations to come for the hours he has already spent on trying to countermand the idiocy of publishers who want to fit reader to book in this ludicrous and arbitary and deleterious fashion. I suppose they would put E.Nesbit’s well-written, entertaining, child-friendly corpus into the adult section. Of course no one likes being told what to do. Publishers particularly hate being told what to do by writers, whom they regard as a necessary evil. It wouldn’t matter if you had Aristotle, Leibniz, Pascal and Betrand Russell lined up to explain just why age-banding is illogical, publishers would simply stick their chins out further, while making notes not to give their books any more publicity. Okay, so I’m cross and perhaps being unfair to teachers, politicians and publishers, not all of whom are idle, ignorant creeps courting popularity, but something MUST be done about the drop in standards of reading which must affect every aspect of our lives, from ethics to simple happiness right across the board. Perhaps we could turn off our individual domestic electricity supplies during daylight hours so that children could not watch television or play on computers and would be forced to read, intially through boredom? How green it would be and how economical. As our heating and cooking is gas I think I might. CHEAT!