Category: travel

Always exotic

Categories
travel

Ouch. How could this happen…again?

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Ponta Negra beach, Natal, Brazil

You’d think that a grown woman with two kids and a lifetime’s experience of sunny holidays would have some clue how to avoid getting a painful sunburn the first day of a holiday.

Tragically, no. It’s been so long since we’ve been anywhere genuinely sizzling. And the equator is a few hundred miles north for goodness sake, you’d think we’d have borne in mind that the power of the sun was FAR stronger than we were used to. You’d think that we would have remembered that a refreshing sea breeze is the very devil of temptation, enticing you to stay out just a bit longer.

For some reason though, first day in the holiday that I catch some serious sun, I always burn. And then days of pain.

Moan, gripe, whinge; I sound like my eldest daughter.

Natal, Brazil is a laid-back resort, very peaceful right now and with a huge, practically deserted beach. The ocean is blue-green and WARM, lovely long waves that surfers can ride for ages before they wipe out. Very little undertow, so perfect for swimming too. And the beach vendors keep the caipirinhas and ice-creams flowing.

Therein lies my sunburn cure, by the way. I plan to spend the next day or two under the affluence of incohol, as my brother-in-law Paul says.

For purely medicinal purposes, naturally.

Categories
mexico travel writing

Papers Please…

int-drivers-permit.jpg 

Going to Brazil requires proper foreign stuff like getting a VISA (for me as a Mexican national) and an International Driver’s License based on the 1926 treaty. It’s all prewar and all, a little cardboard booklet in Pre-War Government Grey.

I have papers! Like you see in films when they say ‘Ihre papieren, bitte…’

Some exciting news re sales of “Invisible City” – the Nielsen BookScan data has been crunched and it’s officially the fastest selling UK children’s debut so far this year! Congratulations to Scholastic for their brilliant work selling and promoting the book and many thanks to everyone who’s read it, blogged about it and given it a terrific review on Amazon or elsewhere. Guys…it’s working!


see Pedro Almodovar Blog

Meanwhile I have found a way to fangirl one of my favourite movie directors, that Castilian genius, Pedro Almodovar. He has a blog where he’s blogging about making his forthcoming movie, “Broken Embraces”.

I almost swooned with pleasure to read that he’s been writing in the ‘Las Mananitas’ hotel in Cuernavaca and to see from his photos that he’s been to Tepoztlan. Both are small towns outside Mexico City, around a hour’s drive away through tree-covered mountains, and both places where we’ve spent wonderful times with friends and family.

I was also delighted to read about his recollections of “Night of the Iguana”, a film I also admire. Of the monologue at the end where Deborah Kerr’s character movingly and naturally speaks of the one moment of (questionable) intimacy in her entire life, Almodovar writes:

“When a character has captured our attention and decides to tell us something intimate, something he has never confessed to anyone, there’s nothing better than letting the actor act. There are no digital effects, no frantic editing that can compare to the intensity of an actor’s face.”

I always try to achieve that cinematic moment in what I write. Robert McKee said that if there’s one message he’d telegraph to movie producers it’s this: MEANING produces EMOTION.

As in; not explosions, special effects, car chases etc; but that moment where you see on the actor’s face the sudden tumbling of the lock’s mechanism, the realisation, admission, confession.

Now in my case I’d like the car chases and the visual thrill too, thanks very much, but when the moment of meaning arrives, what I’m thinking about is the look on an actor’s face.

So – another blog to follow. Yay!

Categories
mexico nostalgia zero moment

Looking for inspiration: Remedios Varo

Some writers like to have a vague idea where they’re going when they write and make it up as they go along, some writers like to spend a great deal of time with the plotting and planning.

I’m one of the planners. I’ve tried it the other way – with me it tends to produce plot structures that lack sufficient impact at the key points. So now, I plan.

But a story also has needs to have some magical, organic quality; something that feels as though it crept in by itself, wasn’t calculated into the mix from the start. Even if actually, it was…

Every writer has their own way of factoring in that magical bit. I suspect we all discover it on our own. Mind-altering substances might do the trick, but that’s a bit risky…

My own ‘method’ came from the realisation that even working to a structured plot, there was still room for movement. So even my ‘finished’ plot plans are in fact only about 85% of the way there.

The last 15% has to be found during the writing. And with me, it is always inspired from outside.

It seems to be something about understanding what makes you tick and connecting something in the story with that.

Without getting too psychoanalytical, we all have something deep down that we really care about and drives us.  Some people are very self-aware; they know what this is…the kind of people who care deeply about politics or religion…are probably going to write books that reflect their thoughts on that.

But if lie me you’re generally vague and mixed-up, it’s a bit more complicated!

However, by accident, I did find the way to extract this magic final 15%. And so far it has worked every time.

I’m not telling though! Nope; that’s going to be my secret.

Here’s a clue though, one thing that inspired me today, in finding the some of the magic 15% for Joshua book 3.

It’s a picture by Remedios Varo, a Mexican artist, a surrealist painter of fantastical works. A close friend of mine in Mexico City introduced me to her work when we were teenagers. I remember a very happy afternoon we spent together in the Museum of Modern Art in Chapultepec looking at these paintings…

The painting above is called Naturaleza Muerta Resucitado which translates as ‘Natural Death Resuscitated’.

Categories
mexico

With the Bohemians – A huevo!


Alonso, Mario, Hector and Pablo of the OU Mexican Society

After Mass last week I overheard two people talking in the shop near church. Their accents gave them away as Mexicans, so I introduced myself as a fellow Mexican. Oxford has a few Mexican graduate students nowadays and over the years I’ve got to know a few of them, which has been a wonderful way to meet Mexican people who are a) much younger than me and b) not related to me!

Pablo invited me to listen to him and some friends playing ‘trova’ at a ‘Bohemian Night’ at Exeter College MCR. ‘Trova’ are soft, latin-american modern folk songs, often with political sentiments. So I sneaked out of the house last Saturday and joined the Young People in the MCR.

Listening to them play, I was transported back to my childhood when my  uncle Jose Luis (‘Pepe’) and some student mates (my mother called them ‘the boys’) of his came to Europe travelling, back in the 1970s. Like Pablo and his pals, they also brought guitars and songs from old Mexico. I was a very impressionable young girl at that time and decided that an intrinsic part of being attractive as a latino male was undoubtedly the ability to sing and play guitar.

I was glad to see that these guys lived up to that stereotype. Like Pepe and ‘the boys’ back in the day, these guys had an impressive command of old Mexican songs by Agustin Lara and Jose Alfredo Jimenez, rancheras, trova songs, ballads…and that was before they began riffing with the audience in English, covering the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, The Eagles,  Don Mclean and Radiohead.

(A highlight was when they played “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles and then without changing the guitar riffs at all – because it’s exactly the same tune – went straight into the older Mexican jarocho song ‘La Bamba’.)

Very bohemian! And quite satisfyingly Mexican, too. Viva Mexico!

I might be going to talk to the Oxford University Mexican Society about ‘The Joshua Files’. Yes, I did tell them, many times, that it’s a children’s book…

 (NB ‘a huevo’ is Mexican slang for saying ‘too right’. And like most Mexican slang, it is probably rather crude…)

Categories
cuba salsa

Oi, Mephistopheles…

Ah, the bliss of a return to Cuban salsa after many weeks, oh really far too long without a proper session. Last night’s Buena Vista Club in Oxford offered the bonus of a rare appearance by a total salsa diva, Cuban dancer Yanet Fuentes.

Watching her performance, I said to my friend Becs, “Is it just me, or would you give up all your education and job and talent in exchange for being able to dance like Yanet.” Becs considered. “I’d pretty much sell my soul to be able to dance like that.”

It would be a very reasonable deal. Yanet is extraordinarily good and has trained since being a little girl with top dancers in Havana. And she’s risen to be the best of the lot!

Now if Mephistopheles happens to be around, let’s talk. It would be the end of the adventure stories, probably. But look at what I would gain…