As this is the first newsletter of the year, the scribes would like to open with the saying “New Year, new start”, and hope that you’ll conveniently overlook the fact that things fell apart in October, November and December, and no newsletters were produced. There were a couple of good reasons for this.
If you want to know what these are, they can best be summed up by the phrase “I was busy”, quickly followed by “Don’t be nosy” and let’s leave it at that. If you really want to know, see the August/September issue re: Mrs Pritchett’s gammy knee and the ongoing work editing and rewriting The Flipside Of Somewhen. More on this later. If anyone is interested, Mrs P’s knee is much better.
So, best foot forward and all that, even if you need to use a crutch for a few weeks to get around. We’ll start with a quick recap of where we’re up to.
Works In Progress
This time last year, I made a New Year’s Resolution, which was to Finish Things (capital F, capital T). To my surprise, I did quite well and did indeed Finish Things, and we’re not just talking about the Christmas leftovers. I didn’t finish everything I set out to do, but made good progress. I think it says more about ambition than being realistic.
First up was The Scriptorium Chronicle. This needed quite a bit more work than I realised. Feedback from early readers raised a few points, which, although easy enough to address, took far longer to do than expected. It turns out that you can’t churn out medieval manuscript illustrations quickly if you want to keep the quality up. These things take time (if for no other reason than it takes a while for the ink to dry). Once completed, it was sent out to a handful of literary agents for consideration. So far, not a single response has been received. It’s disappointing but not unexpected. That’s traditional publishing for you.
I then turned their attention to Pass The Duchy. This needed more of a polish to finish it. Once completed, I immediately started work on The Flipside Of Somewhen. The idea was to let the Duchy sit for a while to get some distance from it before either giving it another polish or sending it out to a small number of carefully chosen literary agents. Some deliberation later, out it went. Guess what? Nothing. Most agents have a line on their websites which says something along the lines of “if you haven’t heard from us in X weeks, you can assume we’re not interested”. That’s right, folks. They’re not even bothering with the polite “thanks but no thanks” anymore.
This brings us to The Flipside Of Somewhen. Begun some 25 years ago (yes, you read that right) and languishing in a drawer ever since, I dusted it off and gave it a reread. Two things struck me: there was a good reason it had stayed in the drawer, but beyond that, it wasn’t anything that a good rewrite couldn’t fix. The basics were there, so in the spirit of Finish Things, I got started. It turns out that the reread was the easy part. Flipside has been hard going. It was as I was getting to the end of the rewrite that it occurred to me that the end I’d written wasn’t the end it needed. There was more story to go to tie up all the loose ends. That said, I’m almost there. There’s about a chapter and a half to write, and then I can set it aside to cool off before going in for the first edit. It will give me a chance to have serious thoughts about how to get The Scriptorium Chronicleand Pass The Duchy out into the world.
There is also The Scriptorium Cookbook to consider. Despite an earlier belief that it was more or less complete (apart from the illustrations and a hefty dose of editing), there are yet more recipes to be included. I think I can safely say that it won’t be coming out this year. It will remain on the Finish Things list for a while longer.
I haven’t forgotten about All Steamed Up. This is at the bottom of the Finish Things list for now, as there were other things I needed to finish first. The problem is that although early reviewers liked the premise, they didn’t like the way it opened. They are right. Looking at it again, it has structural issues and needs a complete rethink. I wrote it with an ensemble cast of characters with colliding plots and subplots. I need to go back to basics and figure out how to go about it. This is a “fix it later” problem I don’t need to worry about right now.
The Wildflower Meadow & The Kitchen Garden
As it is January, it is safe to say that there’s not a lot going on in the wildflower meadow. That said, there is something to see if you’re prepared to get down on your knees and look closely at the ground. Shoots from spring bulbs (I’ve no idea what) are beginning to come up in places, and the red clover that was chopped down when the patch was scythed is growing back. The snowdrop seeds gathered last year have germinated and look like tiny blades of grass.
In the kitchen garden, the cabbages, cauliflowers and kohlrabi are coming along slowly (it is winter, after all), and the garlic and onions are putting on growth. The kale is going strong now that there are no caterpillars to nibble it. The carrots for Christmas were not as intended (short and stubby), but tasted delicious.
The seed catalogue has arrived and is being studied for what to grow this year. I’m thinking along the lines of bee-friendly perennials with a cottage garden feel and heritage vegetables. The seeds collected from the Radiator Charlie tomatoes are ready to go when the weather warms up.
What The Scribes Have Been Reading And Watching
In the last newsletter, I mentioned that I’d been reading “The Invention of Nature” by Andrea Wulf and rewatching “Robin of Sherwood” by Richard Carpenter, produced by HTV and Goldcrest. Firstly, the book.
I found The Invention of Nature to be a thought-provoking read. It is a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, an 18th/19th-century German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, philosopher and scientist, who seems to have single-handedly revolutionised the way we view nature. He travelled extensively in the Americas, seemed to know everyone of any importance in the world of science, and was a pal of US President Thomas Jefferson. There are more things named after Humboldt than anyone else. I found his views on environmental damage and its consequences to be both ahead of their time and highly relevant to the world we now live in. It won the Costa biography award in 2015.
As for “Robin of Sherwood”, let’s say that my memories of it from when it was originally broadcast in the 1980s did not live up to expectations. I found myself not engaging with it, and gave up halfway through after the first Robin died and got replaced by Robin II. It wasn’t that it was bad, but this time around, something didn’t click. I didn’t care enough to keep watching.
Following the books with a nature theme, I read “Chasing The Ghost” by Peter Marren. He’s a renowned naturalist, and this book was an account of his quest to see every species of wild flower native to Britain. It started well enough and concentrated on the last 50 that he hadn’t seen. By the time the first 15 to 20 had been found (or not, as the case may be), I began to get the impression that it was more a book about ticking boxes than anything. It followed the formula of a bit of a hike/scramble to get somewhere (although not always; some of these rare plants seem to be hanging on in a ditch at the side of a road somewhere), find a specimen with the aid of a local botanical expert, tick the box and move on. Yes, there were adventures along the way, but I found myself wanting to know more about the plant itself and what efforts were being made to save it. I guess that’s the gardener in me.
Dear Alexa,
The letter “ ” has stopped working on my omputer. What an I do?
Yours,
ross orrespondent
Dear Mr Orrespendent,
I didn’t know we had a scribe called Ross. May I suggest that until you can replace the keyboard, you use the letter “k” and brush up on how to use the spell-checking functionality of whatever it is that you are using.
Keep kalm and karry on,
Alexa
World’s Best Porridge
Given the recent chilly weather, Mrs P thought that her recipe for porridge would be a timely addition to the newsletter.
Makes enough for 1 Big Scribe, or 2 Medium-sized Scribes, or 3-4 Little Scribes
Prep time: 5 mins (if that)
Cook time: 15 minutes
Ready: 20 minutes
Ingredients
3 tbsp butter (about 45g)
1½ tbsp coarse oatmeal
100g rolled oats
¼ to ½ tsp coarse salt. You need some, but don’t overdo it
680ml boiling water
Directions
1. Take a saucepan and melt the butter over a low heat. Add the oatmeal and let it start to cook in the butter.
2. Add the rolled oats and the salt and continue to let it cook over a low heat. Stir it around and don’t let it burn. It will soon begin to smell like someone is cooking oatmeal biscuits.
3. When the oats have browned and absorbed all the butter, add the boiling water. Be prepared for it to hiss and spit and send up a big cloud of steam, so do this slowly and carefully. Bring back to a boil and stir vigorously. Reduce to a low to medium heat and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time to stop it sticking. Add a bit more water if it seems too thick.
Serve with a drizzle of runny honey and a slosh of cream.
If you have made too much, it keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days.
Mark Weaver 