Tag: memories

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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
nostalgia

In Praise Of Maths and Mr Graham Sadler

Our teenage daughter made me very happy today by telling me that she’s choosing maths as one of her four ‘A’ Levels next year.

Maths is a subject that she’s always found a challenge – and I like to see her push herself, to do a subject that she really doesn’t find easy. This year I’ve had occasion to field phone calls from several annoyed teachers complaining about her not handing in coursework on time – and the maths teacher was one of them. But in the past few weeks her attitude has shifted somewhat. I hope it lasts!

Something similar happened to me – maths was always a subject I grappled with, and yet bizarrely I ended up taking it as an ‘A’ level and even having to sit the Oxford University entrance exam’s ‘maths for scientists’ paper. Crumbs that was scary.

In fact, it’s fair to say that maths was my weakest subject at ‘O’ level. I wasn’t an all As student, far from it. I even failed my maths mock ‘O’ level, which ignited a panic – you needed maths ‘O’ level for most science university degree courses in those days. So my mother found me a tutor – Graham.

Graham was the partner of one of my mother’s best friends. He was vague and eccentric, but a brilliant mathematician and a teacher at Xaverian 6th Form College. An unreformed hippy, Graham was fair-haired and raggedy-bearded with sad blue eyes and a pensive countenance He hardly ever smiled, but told many jokes.

Graham’s Victorian terraced house in Chorlton was a shrine to his interest in music and his travels in India. The walls were draped with rugs, pictures of Hindu deities, old stringed instruments including a sitar. The front room was so crammed with antiques and knick-knacks that you could barely shuffle in between the upright piano and the setees, Ottoman and mahogany coffee table. The air was infused with the smell of marijuana mingled into sandalwood and cloves.

While Graham and I talked quietly about maths in the back room, my mother and her friend would drink tea and talk about German literature in the front room. Graham would look over what I’d done in class that day, explain anything I didn’t understand and sketch out problems on scraps of paper. He’d chain-smoke hand-rolled cigarettes throughout and I’d try not to show that it bothered me. When we’d finished Graham and I would join the others in the front room and we’d eat poppy seed cake or some other home-baked German cake. Graham would play – very badly, a Chopin Nocturne, almost oblivious to our conversation.

It was Graham who persuaded me to do ‘A’ level maths. When I told him I was too thick he just shook his head. “You’re good at maths. You’d be even better if you just believed it.” It was Graham who persuaded me to move away from my beloved high school in the middle of the lower 6th, to Xaverian – a place which would provide the serious hard work and challenge I’d need to have a shot at Oxford.

It was Graham who nodded calmly when I told him in a breathless panic that I…I who couldn’t string two numbers together…would have to take the maths entrance exam paper for Oxford. I was almost choking with fear.

Graham and his then-partner had a child together – Sebastian – named for J.S. Bach. Since he refused to take money for the tutorials, I used to babysit Sebastian a little, until I left for Uni. But nothing like as much as I owed them.

Many years later I asked after Graham of my mother’s friend. Apparently he’d died alone of some gastric complaint and been discovered several days later. A pretty sad way to go and I really felt for his son. Graham wasn’t a good friend and was definitely a difficult man, but he stuck by me that year for no personal gain, just because he believed in me. That’s a REAL teacher.

Anyway…thanks to Graham I got B’s at both ‘O’ level and ‘A’ level maths. And I still hold as one of my personal triumphs that my mark for the maths entrance exam wasn’t my lowest – I got an alpha minus. My tutor at Oxford maybe thought I was some sort of maths genius (biochem candidates notoriously did appallingly on that paper…) – could be that’s what tipped him into awarding me the entrance scholarship.

But honestly it was a stroke of luck; a good paper and the calming influence of Graham Sadler, may he rest in peace.

Categories
comics mexico nostalgia

From Mexican masked wrestlers to Batman


On the left: my sister (in the pretty dress) and I (in the Batman costume) dine out with clowns at Mexico City’s Mauna Loa restaurant. I’m probably 7 years old here.

On the right: our six-year old daughter as Mistico, the masked wrestler, taken a few weeks ago by new friend via Flickr, Alejandro.

Our six-year old daughter has a thing for Mexican masked wrestlers. I’ve seen it all before and I know where it leads.

I became fascinated with Batman via a fascination with the masked wrestlers who were and are still such big heroes in Mexico. When I was little it was Blue Demon and El Santo. These days there are others, like Mistico.

Truthfully I had no idea that the costumes I saw being sold all over gaudy stalls in Mexico’s Chapultepec park were anything to do with wrestling. I thought they were caped crusaders. And that was cool. So when our little daughter begged us to buy her a Mistico mask in Playa del Carmen recently, I knew just how she felt.

Somehow that fascination turned into a full-on obsession with Batman (that I’m not really over to be honest…). My Uncle Johny, a childhood pal of my father’s was always crazy for comic books and ‘pulps’. So naturally his boy, my cousin Juan Fernando, had the best batman suit money could buy. How I envied Juan Fernando that suit. I coveted it something rotten, so when Juan grew out of it, my uncle and aunt kindly gave it to me. The true owner! Only I truly loved that suit.

I wore it everywhere and all the time. I wore it to the university where my grandfather worked and the students would ask ‘Hey Batman, where’s Robin?’ until I actually got fed up.

There wasn’t always a Robin, yanno…

I wore it to restaurants. There was no point arguing with me on this. Thank goodness there were no family weddings or christenings that summer or I’d have worn it to them too.

My Uncle Johny had a library that was to me, basically like a temple. It was full of book shelves and cases of precious sci-fi books, adventure stories, comic books and collectibles. He used to lend me his Ellery Queen books and his Batman paperback versions of the comics. It was in Johny’s library that I first read the Batman origin story, the most impressive one, I believe, for any caped crusader. A rich, privileged boy sees his beloved parents murdered in an alleyway by some thug, all for a string of pearls. And that’s it: over. His life of privilege and all his riches can never replace what he loses right there – his childhood. Bruce Wayne spends his whole life trying to put back something that can never be fixed. And he’s never content – how can he be? No bereavement counselling for Bruce – just a premonition in a bat cave and a life of violence and vendetta against the breed of scumbag who destroyed his life.

Gosh it’s cool.

Categories
nostalgia

Back to the Eggli

Eggli mountain

Here’s a photo of the Eggli mountain in Saanen, Switzerland. It’s taken from the hospital where I broke my leg. In fact I had this great view of the slope from my window while I was there, and could watch clouds of billowing snow shot from cannons in the evening and early morning, saw the snow-cats preparing the piste for skiers, and then the carefree skiers sashaying down the slope.

It really made me want to ski again. I promised myself I would too, until I understood the nature and tedium of the physiotherapy that would have been required to restore my hamstring even to it’s formerly feeble state.

And then I thought…meh. Skiing – it’s not that great.

I’m sitting here in my brother and sister-in-law’s gorgeous chalet in a tiny mountain village near Gstaad, watching their twin babies while their parents finally grab a chance to ski. The babies are scrumptious! One pink and one blue. The village sits at the end of the valley, smack up against the Spitzhorn mountain, of which I have a terrific view, also of the nearby glacier (where there’s a roller coaster at 3000m!!!).

And it’s around -10 degrees celsius outside – not even December yet!

Maybe my brother will shut up about global warming for a bit now.

Well I can’t sit here blogging all day. I’ve bottles to prepare and nappies to change!

And a manuscript for ‘Jaguar’s Realm’ that needs looking at…