st barnabas, northern lights, etc

It's been great having time to walk in the mornings this week and not having to work on the bus and in cafes as well as at work.

I love Oxford for its hidden places and for all its history and literary associations. The above pic shows the Oxford canal running through Jericho, which has plenty of literary associations.

At the far end on the left bank of the canal is the start of the boatyard that Philip Pullman has been fighting to save from development (don't know whether the campaigners have won or lost, though--anybody know?). Both Northern Lights and Lyra's Oxford feature Jericho.

The church tower is that of St Barnabas near to which lived Jude and his family in Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

Oh, and towards the end of my novel The Lock, Gerald walks along this stretch of towpath to the grebe pool on Port Meadow after he has learnt a lesson or two when visiting his daughter Alison on her barge.

Btw The Lock will be reissued next year by StreetBooks. Meanwhile, there's a copy on Amazon UK going for £95. Fair play to the seller but the price does seem excessive.

My wife said they'd probably got the decimal point wrong (hope she meant £9.50, not .95p).

RIP Malcolm McLaren--or should that be something like CBS (come back shouting).

reedbed

Amazing walk along Oxford canal this morning. Air fresh, bright spring sunlight, ducks frisky.

Took this pic near Aristotle Lane--reedbed in between Victorian terraces and new housing development by railwayline. Even fifteen years ago there used to be a mile or so of these bits of marsh and copse but most of them have now been built over.

When you walked from Osney Island to Jericho, say, for a pint at the Harcourt Arms (one of the few city centre pubs with real fires) it was like being in the countryside.

binsey polar bears

This morning I walked to Binsey church (see photo, above, and http://www.achurchnearyou.com/binsey-st-margaret), where we were married back in the nineties.

It was one of the rare mornings nowadays when I have the time to do an Oxford walk like that, heading from Summertown to the canal, across Port Meadow to the Perch and Binsey village. To get to the church you follow a lane--along which I and my best man and ushers walked from the pub that far off day. It's a magic part of Oxford that feels quite out in the country, even though the ring road is half a mile away and the city an equal distance. As I walked through the village--a hamlet really--a woman was sitting on her doorstep smoking a cigarette, the tiny front garden either side of her already alive with colour.

The church is medieval and has no tower, only a low, narrow arch above the nave from which hang two bells. The building is on the site where the patron saint of the city, Frideswide, founded her nunnery and beside it is her sacred well (see photo). Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon are said to have visited in the hope that the water would help them conceive. This well was also made famous by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland where it is described as a 'treacle well'.

In one of the legends of St Frideswide she escapes the attentions of an unwelcome suitor, who she has blinded (quite a woman, Frideswide), by sailing off up the Thames to Bampton, which was then a wilderness. Prophetic--the flight to Bampton--I like to think.

There is also a story about her seeing masses of magpies in a field near Osney and deciding on the strength of this to found an abbey (or some such). Well, I once saw some sixty magpies in a field near Binsey... And no, I wasn't on my way back from the Perch. And no, I didn't decide to found an abbey (or some such).

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to hearing the Front Row piece on Mark Haddon's play Polar Bears, which is on at the Donmar Warehouse until the end of May (which we taped--while we escaped to the Bell at Langford). See http://www.donmarwarehouse.com.

youwriteon and happy easter holidays!

I mentioned on 21st March that I was concerned about the distribution of Invisible by YouWriteOn, the Arts Council-backed publisher of the bridge edition of the novel. I'm pleased to say that the distribution problem has been sorted out and I wish to thank Ed of YouWriteOn for resolving the matter so quickly and generously.

I was also interested to hear about the new plans for the company's publishing programme that will be implemented in two to three months time, as the result of increased Arts Council funding.

Enhancements to the programme will include:

• Sales of YouWriteOn titles direct from its website http://www.youwriteon.com
• Opportunities for those whose books sell well to cross the bridge to mainstream publishing
• Better communication between the company and its authors

I remain enthusiastic about YouWriteOn's bridge publishing concept and wish the company every success.

Happy Easter Holidays!

adlestrop, st nick's and the fox

Thanks again to Helen Peacocke for her book Paws Under the Table, 40 dog-friendly walks from Oxford to the Cotswolds (Wychwood Press, ISBN 978 1 902279 35 0).

This time we drove to Lower Oddington, just west of Stow-on-the-Wold and did an hour-and-a-half walk via Adlestrop and Daylesford before downing a pint of Hooky at the Fox, a flagstoned, beamed and inglenooked foodie pub.

And, yes, I took a photocopy of the Edward Thomas' poem Adlestrop with me and read it aloud to Jess and Tufty near the disused station. (Copied from my prized Faber Collected Poems, 1945.)

We also visited St Nicholas' church, Lower Oddington and saw the medieval doom painting that was restored early last century (photo above).

Here is Aldlestrop:

Yes. I remember Adlestrop---
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop---only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and father, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

post...

On a bus tootling through west Oxfordshire, Kings of Leon rocking through phones. Flatlands, Thames Valley lands glimpsed over high hedges, sheep nibbling roots scattered round their troughs, twenty-to-thirty swans devastating a patch of spring corn. A landscape that has been familiar in its Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire manifestations for thirty years.

Unusually, I don't have my nose buried in a short story that I'm marking, nor in some other work-related document. Yes, the assignments were returned last night and I am, at last, in post-teaching mode for a few weeks, after which...

And coming up is Easter, which I can't wait for.

Post-festival too, although Oxfringe 2010 still has a long way to run (see http://writersinoxford.org for WiO involvement).

Loved the tiny bit of the festival and fringe that I was involved in--the Blackwell's reading, the Initiate launch (a terrific event) and doing the WiO festival'n'fringe website pages. A huge thank you to Jane Bingham for organising the WiO introducers this year.

Uh-oh Use Somebody's just kicked off--not surprised it won that big US best humdinger of the year award.

Of course, I'd have liked to see more at the festival but work got in the way. Next year. Would have especially liked to see Philip Pullman, who was everywhere, but had to content myself with an excellent profile of him on Radio 4 last Sunday morning at 5.45 am and Bryan Appleyard's interesting article in the Sunday Times.

I meet Philip every so often at WiO and Oxford-related events but can't say I know him. He always knows he knows me but doesn't know where from. We meet, he asks me whether, say, I am reading at this year's festival too (he always over-promotes me), I explain that I'm editing the WiO newsletter or chairing the society but next time it's just the same. My happiest memory of him is of a hazy evening whisky tasting at his house that was led by the late drinks writer Michael Jackson. I love the way Philip has kept up his involvement with WiO after his big (big? humongous!) break. On the R4 profile it was said that he is a loyal person, which he is.

Nearly at Oxford. Looking forward to working on StreetBooks this afternoon and the coming weeks (http://www.streetbooks.co.uk). Not to mention the new novel.

nature notes

Early start this morning, so I could drive into Oxford for my 8 am MSt tute at Rewley with time to spare for a double espresso at Green's cafe. It was amazingly light when I was eating breakfast. Loved sitting in the kitchen looking out into the garden while munching toast and marmalade, no need of electric light, the door open.

April showers are here before the event, it seems. The air is warm and they will soon get the spring flowers moving. The daffs that ring the plane trees in Broad Street are finally out now and when I was walking back to the park-and-ride this afternoon it looked like the buds on the horse chestnuts in front of St Frideswide's church, Osney were about to burst open. Those trees are always well before most others--although I'm sad to say I think it is because they are stressed. Awful to imagine them being permanently under pressure for at least the last twenty-three years--I think it's some sort of strange fungus that they've got.

At the risk of sounding like a sadist, they do look great in the spring and early summer. It's when they get black and gummy later on that they're sad.

A weekend of marking online assignments beckons.

Right now, though, my printer has just entered 'power saver mode' and I think I'll do the same.

(Meanwhile, photoed these larch roses in the Parks, Oxford yesterday. Jess and I used to go and look at the roses on this tree when I was at Keble.)

blackwell's, initiate and two former students

Enjoyed reading at World Writers at Blackwell's. It's a fun, good-natured event that gives unpublished writers the chance to read their work alongside published ones, including the writers in residence--this year, Roma Tearne and my colleague on the Oxford MSt course, Jane Draycott. (Roma will also be taking up a week's residency at Blackwell's from 26th April-1st May.)

This year the Blackwell's audience was particularly giving, I thought, and the overall effect of the event was of successive voices--each so different, each so thought-provoking. The World Writers at Blackwell's festival series will continue at the Marquee Christ Church tomorrow, Thursday 25th March, 7.15 pm-7.45 pm, and at Blackwell's, 50 Broad Street, 1 pm-2 pm, Friday 26th and Saturday 27th March. Admission is free.

These events are the result of the unflagging determination of Rita Ricketts, the Blackwell's organiser.

Rita and Jane are also colleagues on the editorial panel of the new creative writing anthology, Initiate, that will be launching at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival tomorrow, Thursday 25th March, 6 pm. The event is billed as follows and it's a privilege to be involved:

A special preview of exciting new voices from Oxford's MSt in Creative Writing, alongside established names such as Tim Pears, David Constantine, Grevel Lindop, Fred D'Aguiar and Christina Koning, all appearing in the first Blackwell/Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing annual anthology, INITIATE (published in autumn 2010). The readings (including by the winner of the A M Heath Prize for Fiction) will be introduced by Jon Stallworthy, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oxford, and Dr Clare Morgan, Director of the MSt and co-editor of the anthology with Rita Ricketts, Blackwell's historian. 

Meanwhile, today brought news of two former students. One, Liz Gifford, will be reading at Oxfringe's China Evening on 31st March at the Malmaison Hotel , 7.15 pm. Liz will be reading from her book Into the River. I also heard from Norma Sit, who sent me a link to a fascinating TV chat show interview she did on channelnewsasia.

Today was great.

new bus ticket 2

Yes, of course it was a monthly ticket. I wouldn't get so excited about a single, would I? That really would stupid.