What Daisy Did Next

paper face girl

2010-05-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

So What Daisy Did Next was set up in Texas when I was about to fly out to Nicaragua to begin my volunteering for La Esperanza de Granada.
The blog was a way to record my adventures for myself and for any friends or family who were interested. It was only intended to be a personal log, but since I came back home and my day-to-day life isn’t quite as thrilling I’ve been writing about anything and everything… so I thought it was time to start a slightly more professional blog. My new space is The Paper Face Girl, so update your browsers! I have to say I’m really liking WordPress so far...

If you'd like to read more about Nicaragua, and my experience volunteering for La Esperanza de Granada, look in the Best of Nicaragua links to the right, or check out the archives from January - April 09.

If anyone is considering volunteering for La Esperanza feel free to contact me, my details and story are up on their website, under volunteering; experiences.

Here are some photos of my time there.

A well-attended funeral in Granada.

Mombacho at sunset.

Alfredo taking a picture of me on my camera on the day of the red party, just before the incident occurred... At least Eleanor took this so I can remember both Alfredo and my camera!

Con todos los ninos en la Prescolar: Alfredo, Esteban, Pancho etc.

being a writer is about making people like you

2010-05-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

Hello lovely & neglected readers,
I for once have an excuse for not writing lately as I am in the middle of a 6000 word contemporary fiction essay (I say middle but that's putting it a bit optimistically) and cobbling together another 6000 words of creative writing for my last portfolio entry before we're left to our own devices to write our DISSERTATION - sorry for shouting but whenever I think of it, I see it in scary capitals.

I have of late been consumed by election-fever. Truly I have become addicted to BBC News 24, scrolling through updates on my mobile when I was forced to go to university and suffered from withdrawal symptoms. It has been an exciting time, and I've made some new friends and enemies in the process but as we now finally have a new Prime Minister, (David Cameron), Deputy (Nick Clegg) and national mood (confused) I feel like it's time to move on.

During the election campaign, the election itself, and then for several days afterward where the press set up camp outside Downing Street and the meaning of the phrase 'BREAKING NEWS' was stretched to breaking point, I did spare a thought for all the news stories being crowded out of the spotlight - the Louisiana oilslick for example would normally have been center-stage. So I had a look through the rest of the paper to see what I had been missing.

I read about the tragic spate of copy-cat killings in kindergartens in China in The Independent (usually an excellent source of unbiased news reporting):

"China vowed to "strike hard" yesterday to quell public alarm after a lone man hacked seven children to death, the sixth attack in a Chinese school in less than two months.

Sixteen children have been killed and dozens injured since late March, forcing the government to ramp up security. (.......)

The attacks have sparked anger, since most middle-class families are restricted to a single child under China's population control policy and spend huge amounts of time and effort on raising their offspring. Sociologists say the deaths reflect a lack of support for the mentally ill and rising stress resulting from huge social inequalities in China's fast-changing society". (......)
You can read the article in full HERE.

Does anyone else think this is a really offensive way of covering this story? The attacks have sparked anger... really? I realise journalists have to conform to a certain word count but still anger doesn't seem to nearly begin to cover the range of human emotions experienced at the murder of children...since most middle-class families are restricted to a single child under China's population control policy and spend huge amounts of time and effort on raising their offspring - Probably they also invest huge amounts of love and tenderness and hope also, all of which would still be lost even if they did luckily happen to have a spare child... I can't imagine this story being covered in this way if sixteen children had been butchered in the UK. There seems to me to be an unwillingness to connect with the Chinese people here, a reluctance to wholly empathise, to feel their pain as we would if it were our own schools, our own children. I know we can't read every news story as if it were happening to people we know, but surely we can try to write them with a bit more compassion and understanding?

I was thinking about this when a young friend of mine (M!) told me they wanted to be a journalist when they grew up. Because I was thinking about this story, I told them I thought that they should pick an easier career. M thought about this and said "yeah, you're right it must be really hard, because being a writer is about making people like you". Out of the mouths of babes, as they say. I've been turning this over in my mind ever since... Is it? What do you guys think? I wrote it down to come back to and on the page it struck me that you could take the word 'like' to mean 'the same as, or equal to' which makes perhaps an even more interesting statement. Writers have to imagine themselves into other people's worlds, and if they do this well enough you do feel like you somehow know them personally. As Holden Caulfield says in Catcher in the Rye,

"What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."

Something to think on
xxxxx

not all speeches are created equal

2010-05-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

Well done Gordon, well done.

r u a bigot???

2010-04-29T05:44:00.000-07:00

Poor old Gordon. They told him to go out and talk to Real People and this is what happened.

This on-mike gaffe has now become known as bigot-gate, and the image of Brown with his head in his hands while a tape of the incident was played back to him will undoubtedly become one of the key images of the campaign.

The world is presently splitting up into two groups - those who think Gordon Brown was wrong to say what he said about Mrs Duffy, 'a 66 year old Grandmother and lifelong Labour voter' as the press insist on referring to her, and those who think Mr Brown was justified in calling her a bigot as she asked (somewhat comically) "All these Eastern Europeans, where are they flocking from?". People in the latter group tend to think that the worst aspect of the gaffe is the inconsistency of it; the difference between Brown's public and private persona. They even suggest it would have been better for Brown to have simply said to Mrs Duffy that her views regarding immigration were closed-minded rather than waiting until after she'd gone to express his true opinion.

As for me I think Brown was unlucky, and I think bigot-gate exposes an interesting shift in British moral values. We now seem to live in a society where it doesn't matter what you say to people, so long as you say it to their face.

At times it does seem, as it must now seem to Brown, that technology is out to trip us up. Once typing 'I'm sorry I can't get rid of her, she won't take the hint!' into the wrong window of MSN messenger has scarred me for life from online chatting (I was thirteen and somehow managed to extricate myself from this situation with everyone's dignity intact but I still remember the plunging feeling which Brown no doubt experienced, on film, during his radio interview). Similarly a friend of mine once received an email from a work colleague which was perfectly polite but included her in a chain of correspondence in which at an earlier point this work colleague had talked very negatively about her and questioned whether she ought to have been given the responsibilities she held. This is a classic case of what I call 'reply-all remorse'.

The fact is that there are few if any of us who have not at some point said one thing to someone's face and another behind their back. Yet it seems to me that one of the worst things you can be accused of in today's society is being 'two-faced'. In the past this might have been referred to as tact, or plain common sense - saying things to people that they will find offensive or upsetting is generally considered unkind and if it is unnecessary to do so then most people would agree it is best not to. Would Mrs Duffy have felt any better if Brown had called her a bigot to her face? Unlikely. She would have been embarrassed and humiliated and may well have said other things which she might later have regretted. Arguably, in heading her off the topic of immigration Brown was ensuring that she too saved face.

I believe this mania for abusing people to their face is connected to the rise in technology and reality TV. On Big Brother the press fall savagely upon contestants who they consider to be duplicitous or 'two-faced'; it is the worst crime one can commit on the show and will undoubtedly lead to an early eviction. I have never understood this. In real life if someone is irritating or offensive you have two options; either stop associating with them, or tell them how irritating and offensive you find their behaviour and deal with the fall-out. Big Brother is different in that the contestants are forced to spend all their time in close-contact with the others regardless of whether they get on - and let's be honest they've usually been chosen specifically because they won't. So you can't avoid them, and by confronting them you're going to create significant upset for both them and you from which there is no respite. In one series I watched a contestant march up to another and accuse her of bad-mouthing her behind her back 'If you've got something to say, say it to my face!' she screamed at the other girl - who calmly said 'Okay, I don't like you. There's nothing you can do about it, we're just not going to get on, and I wouldn't have told you that because it would upset you'. I wish I could remember who the girl was but I do recall she got voted out immediately afterwards.

All this abuse directed at people who are seen as two-faced strikes me as extremely hypocritical and perhaps fuelled by our own guilt. The key to me seems to be whether it is necessary to be upfront with the person, and whether you would achieve anything by doing so. In Big Brother the girl was right, their personalities were so conflicting the two of them were never going to get on so there was no point in saying so. Gordon made a snap decision that there was similarly 'no point' in debating immigration with Mrs Duffy as she would never agree with him, so immersed in Tabloid melodrama and emotive headlines as she appeared to be. This is akin to when your Granny announces that those Muslims are ruining our country and should be dealt with - most of us sigh, say nothing, and look away because we believe there is no point in debating the issue, it will only upset both of you. It is this which is the real issue here, the fact that those of us with liberal views appear to have decided that to debate with so-called 'bigots' is futile. I believe Brown's subsequent anger was directed at himself as he felt - as we all do in these instances - guilty for not attempting to engage on the topic of immigration. In my opinion it is this refusal to engage in a dialogue which is allowing the BNP to gain votes and it must be seriously looked at.

So do I blame Brown for his comments, yes, but no more than the rest of us.

What do you think? Have you ever had a similar gaffe? Anything you'd like to say to my face(book)?

people power

2010-04-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

I wanted to open this by saying 'Now, I'm no politico, but...' but it reminded me of the way a lot of women now seem to say 'Now I'm not a feminist, but...' which is ridiculous because most people uphold feminist values and yet feminism has developed such negative connotations that people shy away from the term. Same with politics, people are embarrassed to admit having an interest in it. Everyone's keen to say that they don't 'follow' politics but most people have an opinion. And you should have an opinion - it shouldn't just be the hardcore political activists or the Oxbridge graduates all set for a career in Westminster who discuss the political arena. Which is why I think the election debates and the increasing influence of the internet in this election is so amazing, whatever party you support, because it's got people engaging with politics.

Now friends, I've got a 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy on Conservatives ;) so feel free to log off now as this next bit is biased - purely because it's made up of things I've personally come across and I'm coming at it from a Lib Dem (& Labour if forced) angle. Here are a few of my favourite things:

click on the photos to enlarge!
1)

via http://www.moneymad.org/ which is anti-capitalism in general

2) and they said it couldn't be photoshopped

via qwghlm

3)
MyDavidCameron.com is the site that started it all, with a growing collection of homemade spoofs of Cameron's campaign posters, including this one which I think is my favourite of theirs:

4) #nickcleggsfault
One of the biggest changes the internet brings to the debate is the speed with which the public respond to new developments. When the pro-Tory newspapers came out with what has been perceived as slurs on the Lib Dem leader, the Twitterverse responded by creating the 'nickcleggsfault' hash tag where everything from dropping your toast jam-side down to the Icelandic volcano were blamed on Nick Clegg - following the logic that if we he'd done all the papers accused him of there was probably a bunch of other stuff he was responsible for. The Guardian technology blog has a good article on the phenomenon. It was such a success it even resulted in a song version just hours on...

5)
It's all Nick Clegg's fault, the musical

6)
fuckyeahnickclegg - a tumblr devoted to the pure sex that is Nick Clegg (I think there's a lot of tongue in cheek going on here but I'm serious - did you see him working that tousled bedhead last night? Hot.)

LOLZ

So feel free to respond with your own personal faves, whatever your political persuasion - democracy is cool.

And if there was a time for joining Twitter, now is definitely it - it really comes into its own at times like this. I read a comment from someone yesterday saying "It's a shame there isn't like a Twitter newspaper so that we could see what people actually think!" which amused me, as I think that's what newspapers were intended to do - rather than tell us what to think...

Political tweet of the week is non-partisan and came from the hilarious Richard V Hirst aka Vivmondo, on the first leaders debate "This is the worst Kraftwerk gig ever" unfortunately spelled 'Kraftwek' but retweeted liberally nonetheless and now immortalised in cartoon.

Just remember kids, that unlike the X-factor or Over the Rainbow when your favourite is in the bottom two and you think, jeez I should really vote next time but it's okay because Simon Cowell/Andrew Lloyd Webber will save them - that actually doesn't happen in a general election, they just disappear. So VOTE!

xxxxx

WWDD?

2010-04-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

One of my friends has a bracelet which says 'WHAT WOULD DAISY DO?' which is probably not something I would recommend. Jesus is a better role-model for the most part, although let's be honest, I have better hair. So to make up for not posting anything in like a gazillion years, here are some brief thoughts on things so you at least know WHAT DAISY THOUGHT.

On the new Ricky Gervais film, Cemetery Junction:
Tonally very tricksy, veering between realism and farce. Unfortunately for the most part this script tends to over-egg the pudding - so the world is split up into feminists and misogynists and there are no shades of grey in between. It would have been nice to see some redeeming elements to Ralph Fiennes' character but no; he follows his Harry Potter role as Lord Voldemort with that of an even bigger villain - a man who no longer thanks his wife for a cuppa tea. Having said that, the three young leads do an excellent job at making you care about these characters, and if you're that way inclined the film is worth seeing for Tom Hughes' cheekbones alone....

On the election:
I don't understand why people are being swayed by the list of businesses backing the Conservatives - of course they're going to be against tax increases, turkeys don't vote for Christmas! I'm disappointed in M&S for wading in to the political arena. Whatever your political allegiance I think it's a bad day for democracy when businessmen are setting the agenda. I'm loving the Nick Clegg phenomenon at the moment (ok you got me, I'm with the Lib Dems) and I'm amused by commentators on Twitter worrying that he's 'peaked too soon', deary me, when is the man supposed to peak exactly? We're in the month before the election and most people have only recently become able to pick him out of a line up. Go Nick!

On books:
Stop reading this rubbish now and go buy Reality Hunger; A Manifesto by David Shields. Can't recommend it more, reading it was like having one of those dreams where you have loads of epiphanies and then you wake up and can't remember exactly what they were - so I'm reading it again, armed with a highlighter. A bigger post on this shall be forthcoming as it is the topic of my contemporary fiction essay. As part of research for the essay I also read Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, the true story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun during and post the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans, which I stayed up reading and crying over till the early hours. The reason it's so effective is that Eggers doesn't try to point score, he simply tells the story of what happened to Zeitoun and leaves the reader to make up their own minds.

On TV:
It worries me how quickly I've forgotten David Tennant and fallen for the new Dr, Matt Smith. There's some great writing on Dr Who, and as someone who doesn't read Science Fiction it's nice to see something completely fantastical. Fine family fun.
In other news I hope you're all watching Over the Rainbow the search for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Dorothy. It's the best drama on the telly and so brilliantly camp. The perfect way to chill after writing all day (I would imagine).

On Writing:
I've been reading Zadie Smith's collection of essays, Changing My Mind which I'm really enjoying (if nothing else it gives you a certain feeling of sophistication to sit in Caffe Nero reading it). She has one essay in particular about the craft of writing that cheered me so much that I feel I must reproduce parts of it here in the hope it might cheer you too. She says that when she begins writing a novel she experiences something she calls OPD, obsessive perspective disorder,
"It occurs mainly in the first twenty pages. It's a kind of existential drama, a long answer to the short question What kind of novel am I writing? It manifests itself in a compulsive fixation on perspective and voice. In one day the first twenty pages can go from first-person present tense, to third-person past tense, to third-person present tense, to first-person past tense, and so on".
This is exactly what I was doing so it was encouraging to hear that it did eventually pass. Smith says that however much she has changed it she always ends up with third-person past but that OPD is still an important process. Funnily enough I've now stuck at third-person past also, no new-fangled modernism for me it turns out.

I think a proper post on 'the craft of writing' may well be forthcoming, till then I will leave you with some fashion advice: Green nail varnish looks nice in the bottle but you look a lot like Princess Fiona from Shrek once it's on, and when you try to take it off it stains your fingers yellow and makes you look like 30-a-day girl.

That is all.

travelling / running away

2010-03-06T16:38:00.000-08:00

Mombacho, taken at dusk from the bell tower.

Nick Laird has a great line about 'The patron saint of elsewhere' (in the poem Light Pollution click to hear it read by the man himself).

I like travelling for travelling's sake, I've always enjoyed slow trains and long bus journeys - it's where I do some of my best thinking; untangle plot lines, realise great holes in the motivation of my characters, and make long lists of Things To Do that never get done. But mostly I like the idea of other lives I might be living, in other places. I've never been drawn to the idea of backpacking around the world, seeing hundreds of places, meeting hundreds of people; coming home with tan lines where your flipflops have been, a smattering of other languages, and a dozen new Facebook friends. For me the fascination lies with inhabiting a place, trying it on for size.

This time last year I had just begun to feel completely settled in Granada: Every morning I'd wake up at six to a silent house full of people with later hours. The sun would already be bright but not too hot, and I would tie my sheet around me and go inspect the kitchen for ants. There were three different types of ants in our house, and they would swarm around any forgotten crumbs of food in three distinct lines. I would pull back the wooden doors to let in the light and the noise of the street through the iron bars. I would see if the water was on and if so I would put it on the stove to boil for tea, and make scrambled eggs and grill toast. The women selling fruit on the streets would start up their cries "Melon! Banana! Sandia!" Twice a week I would unlock the bars and heave the garbage bags across the porch, over the railings and onto the street where I had to watch to make sure stray dogs didn't pick them apart and strew rubbish all across the road. If I looked left down the road I could usually see the blue outline of Mombacho volcano looming in the near distance.

Right now I'm thinking there are other places out there that I'd like to explore, and I'm addicted to this site, which offers glimpses into exotic neighbourhoods and other peoples' stories. Magical.

An Enemy of the People - Review

2010-02-20T10:59:00.000-08:00

The Sheffield Crucible has undergone a £15 million refurbishment to restore this faded 70's venue to its former glory. Its debut production is Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, staring Antony Sher and directed by its new Creative Director, Daniel Evans.

photograph by Tristram Kenton

Enemy is an ambitious choice; it's tonal ambiguities were recognised by Ibsen himself who wrote to his publishers in Copenhagen - "I am still uncertain as to whether I should call it a comedy or a straight drama. It may have many traits of comedy, but it also is based on a serious idea." Perhaps purposefully, Daniel Evans has done little to clarify matters in this production.

Sher plays Thomas Stockmann, a community doctor in a small town newly-opened as a health spa. After some covert research Thomas discovers that the town's water supply - and by extension its spa - is dangerously contaminated, and with the innocence of a lamb to the slaughter the good doctor believes his discovery will be gratefully received by the spa committee, headed by his brother Peter (John Shrapnel). Fairly obviously this does not prove to be the case, and upon discovering the economic implications of the Doctor's report, one by one all Thomas' former allies allow greed and fear to nudge them over to the other side. This audience realised Thomas' vulnerability almost immediately and laughed knowingly whenever Thomas made any especially hubristic statements.

While proving a hit with the audience, one couldn't help but feel at times that in striving to highlight the play's comedic elements Evans limits its tragic potential. There was an almost manic feeling to the action in the first half, presumably an attempt to heighten the blow to Thomas when it comes, however this one-note tumult gets tiring. Lucy Cohu as Thomas' wife Kristina particularly peaked too soon and spent the second half in a paroxysm of hysteria so sustained as to lose much of the sympathy which ought to have been easy to come by. Sher occasionally falls foul of this also, but generally his performance is strong in a difficult and slightly implausible role as this most holy of fools.

But one can see why Evans has chosen Enemy as the debut performance from a revamped Crucible; despite its intellectual exploration of society versus the individual, this is a pacy punchy play with easy laughs and an accessible plot. With a superbly designed set by Ben Stones and a warm and intimate atmosphere forged by the sympathetically renovated auditorium, there was a high level of audience interaction on opening night. It is also a bold choice and while at times the humour of the play threatens to overbalance itself, thanks to a genuinely moving performance by Sher the tragic scenes still resonate: After a town meeting at which everyone has turned on him for selfish reasons, pretending not to believe the Doctor's report, Thomas references another well-known martyr figure and declares "I will not say 'forgive them, they know not what they do'" and the line still carries its weight.

Overall this was a lively and enjoyable production and a successful start to this new Act in the history of The Sheffield Crucible.

Book now! ****

primavera azul

2010-02-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

And listen to this - Primavera Azul, my favourite song from Nicaragua, it means, appropriately, 'Blue Spring'.

feliz cumpleanos Deysi Estrella

2010-02-20T08:42:00.000-08:00

Hola amigos!
Having a birthday in February is generally acknowledged to be rubbish: it's definitely still Winter, bleaker than December and yet the cosy lure of being wrapped up in front of the fire listening to rain on the roof has gone, to be replaced by a beaten-down general sense of gloom. Sorry February, but you know it's true.

Prone as I am to a bit of Winter blues, and a general hatred of birthdays, I decided this year to have a low-key Summer fest. For those of you also hoping to hasten the onset of Spring, here's what worked:

* A penniless student-friendly home spa day with a Lush Sex Bomb that turned the bath fairy pink with floating petals and the air full of jasmine (mood enhancer on a par with street drugs), followed by various lotions and potions and sweet almond oil (mix a bit of this with some coarse sugar for a delicious facial scrub) and lashings of Johnson's Holiday Skin for a cheat tan.

* A soundtrack of Tilly and the Wall, Noisettes and Vampire Weekend.

* A birthday voucher from Yo Sushi and a happy hour watching my Dad try to decide what he wanted from the conveyor belt but moving so slowly it had floated past before he'd made up his mind and I had to pass it over to him. My new favourite is coriander tuna sashimi with lime. I imagine it would go very well with -

* A killer frozen strawberry margarita recipe which contains liberal amounts of my favourite alternative to sunshine: Tequila

pic via bestmargaritarecipes.com

* A stack of birthday cupcakes which tasted even better than they looked...

* An amazing amazing Dia de los Muertos charm bracelet from Etsy which came with a free gift of skull earings! And a Mexican turquoise and coral necklace, all courtesy of mi hermana :)

* My birthday present to myself which was a £5 hammock from Urban Outfitters which I have strung between the two low branches of the pine tree out front and spent the afternoon, margarita in hand, swinging idly and looking up through the branches and watching the mist of my own breath...

And what d'ya know, the sun came out, not in a Nicaraguan blazing wax-melting insect-attracting way, but that pale English sun which hints at strawberries and cream, and pots of tea and picnics at the beach where the sand gets in your sandwiches and ice cream gets in your hair.... Ahhhh

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and gifts
con mucho amor x x x

performance anxiety

2010-02-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

I suffer from stage fright. No really, I start talking and stop breathing and my voice gets higher and higher and squeakier and squeakier until I realise that if I don't take a giant gulp of air then I am going to faint and it won't be the graceful swoon of a damsel in distress but a staggering embarrassing fall from grace. This only occurs in formal situations, usually you can't shut me up. Recently we got a new tutor for our workshops who likes to time everyone so that we all give exactly two minutes of feedback. Someone in the class is armed with a stopclock and they tell you when to start and stop (with a 30 second warning). I like the idea but for some reason it seems to have changed my perception of the exercise into something dramatic and scary and two minutes seems like forever and the possibility of slipping senseless to the floor ever more likely. It's silly, really.

As we discussed while talking about 'celebrification of the author' in our contemporary fiction class; public speaking, at readings and university seminars, is becoming an increasingly important part of being a writer. We also read a piece which baldly stated the benefit of being 'telegenic' and attractive, of selling yourself as much as the writing. It's interesting then to have the opportunity lately to witness many writers doing just that...

Martin Amis has been accused of manipulating the media; saying controversial things for effect and then sitting back while the headlines and column inches stack up. At the book launch last week for his latest novel The Pregnant Widow, at Manchester University, Martin assured us this was not the case, Jordan (Katie Price) is the only person capable of successfully manipulating the press, he declared. He also announced he was no longer going to publicly criticise Jordan (in the past he has referred to her as just 'two bags of silicone', a comment which certainly got him mentioned in the Daily Mail). The launch was technically compered by Lisa Allardice, editor of the Guardian review, but the pace was definitely set by Martin who has a wonderful way of seeming to answer a question but in fact leading in to an anecdote he always intended to tell. Love him or hate him you've got to admire his style. Click here for an excerpt from The Pregnant Widow, courtesy of The Manchester Review.

Sophie Hannah at January's They Eat Culture event was a masterful self-publicist, telling us the premises of several of her books which sounded so intriguing that you felt you had to buy them all simply to find out the solution. As an example, she outlined the beginning of her award-winning short story, the Octopus Nest where a couple looking back through photo albums of their past decades together suddenly realise that the same woman is present in the backgrounds of all their photos, from different years, from all over the world. Ah, I do love a good premise. Sophie was also impressively candid in talking about hilariously inept former agents and in recommending agents she admired to members of the audience.

This month's Word Soup had a quite astonishing range of speakers. The theme was 'Love' (as it was so close to Valentines Day) and not pancakes, which though tasty present less literary possibilities. A really great performance poet, (Louise Fazkerley) read her poem 'The Commute' with enviable poise, one open-mike man attempted to read his poetry without having it written down, forgot his lines and cheerfully gave up, unfolding them from his pocket, another man who had overrun his allotted three minutes telling us the story of a futuristic jail underground, refused to be curtailed and had to be hustled of the stage by our compere while loudly singing "Happy Birthday" - which was apparently the climax of his tale. An elderly lady announced halfway through her piece about a relationship 'now look, this bit's metaphorical' and proceeded to say something which I sincerely hope wasn't metaphorical... Emily Morris told us about her experience at a mother and baby group where someone had recommended teething salts which could be rubbed onto the baby's gums in a powder form, to which Emily replied -"Like cocaine?" hilariously resulting in ostracisation from 'baby massage class' and then, as the climax to the evening's events, was our headline act, Joe Stretch.

Joe had been in the building, he told us, since six o'clock when he had ordered half a lager - it was now half ten, so as a person who has watched many televised award shows, I had an inkling of what was in store. Joe proceeded to tell us that he had been here, (drinking presumably) since the thirteenth century practically, since before we were all here, since before the building we were sitting in was even built (I've edited out the swearing.) He propositioned one or two ladies for sexy time, as it's been a while, apparently. In fairness this was in the context of....well I can't really say but there was a context anyway. He proceeded to read from one of his books, (which I believe was Friction), a tale of anal sex. "To end the night as so many do end", he reflected, before pausing to heckle the Happy Birthday-singing man who at this point was making his way quite noticeably to the exit.. "And where do you think you're going?" he asked,
"It's a choice between you and a cigarette.." said our man boldly.
"I'm not going to lie to you," said Joe solemnly, "I think you've made the right choice." As we all listened to the story of anal sex I realised a couple of drinks were probably necessary to deliver it with the desired aplomb - it's impressive to be able to shock someone of the Skins generation (although the old lady seemed unfazed). He even skipped one section, declaring it was just too dirty to read out, if we could believe it - given what he was reading out I'm not sure I did believe it and will definitely be purchasing a copy of Friction in order to check. When Joe had finished his very well-read eye-opening number and left the stage with the immortal words "Thanks very much, now fuck off home!" I thought well, that's one way to do it.

Am off now to see some real actors at the newly renovated Sheffield Crucible for a press preview of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People - ah got connections you see...
Very high-brow review to follow xxxx

different strokes for different folks

2010-02-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

Growing up in a SNT (Small Northern Town) I wasn't exposed to a whole lot of music. My mum likes to warble show tunes from the 1930s at unholy times in the morning and my Dad listens to radio 4. My friends used to like Blue, and A1 and 5ive -before they split up. I would go along to concerts with them and feel completely lost.

I remember vividly the first time I heard The Strokes album Is This It.

It was in HMV in Preston, I was thirteen, and I just stood there listening to the whole song (Last Nite) and feeling like someone had cracked open the top off my skull and let the music in, I could feel it squeezing my heart, it was Magic. All this might sound over the top - I was living in Lancashire not Wyoming - but I had honestly never heard anything remotely like it. I remember I had been given £20 only because my mum hadn't been able to find any change, and I knew I wasn't supposed to spend it, although they hadn't specifically said so because what would I have spent it on? For me there was no question, I had to have the album. When I went to pay for it the guy at the till turned it over and said "hey girl this is a cool album" and I knew it was. Later I learnt how hyped The Strokes had been by the British press, but somehow none of this had reached me in my bubble world, I didn't need to be told anyway, I knew it was cool because I could feel it.

I was fascinated by the voice in the song, its cruel mocking tone so alien to the boybands I had gotten used to. The man in the song is pretending to comfort his needy girlfriend but in reality is going to leave her...
"Oh, little girl, I don't care no more.
I know this for sure,
I'm walking out that door,"
It was real, it was grown up, it was New York in black with neon lights.

My parents were pretty angry when they found out I'd spent the 'housekeeping money' on music, we had a row and I went upstairs and played it over and over again while lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling. About midway through the second run-through my mum came in and rested her head on the door-frame, "It is good isn't it?" she said.

I soon found out though that my other friends weren't so keen. I was surprised but not discouraged because I didn't need anyone else to agree with me, I knew it was good. It was then that I really understood that art is subjective. Until then I had thought if something was good everyone knew it, everyone felt it. It was then that I felt confident enough, the next time someone asked me to an A1 concert, to say, No thanks, I don't like them. It felt good.

So when we feedback on the week's submissions for the Creative Writing workshop, and someone, or everyone, hates the bit I love or vice versa, that realisation comes back to me. When I collect the critiques for my own work opinion is always split between those who like it and those who don't, sometimes 90 -10 sometimes more like 50 - 50. Ultimately I think you can only take on-board the criticism you agree with, because.. you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time - after all some people don't like The Strokes.

Happy Valentines Day lovely readers, los quiero
xxxx

Interview with Emily Morris of My Shitty Twenties

2010-02-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

Here is my interview with Emily Morris which I wrote for the recently refurbished Lancashire Writing Hub. It was really interesting talking to her about the privacy issues of blogging and her advice for those writing personal blogs. I plan on doing a post on the value and dangers of the blogging phenomenon shortly...on my blog *ah the irony*.

Daisy xxx

i'm contemporary innit

2010-02-07T15:45:00.000-08:00

This semester we're taking a class in contemporary fiction, and this week we've been discussing publishing trends; to what extent they are manufactured by the industry, and how we feel about them. It was a really interesting topic and I think this class is going to be very different to anything I've done before, either during the degree or last semester on the MA.

A great thing about the course is that everyone is coming out of different backgrounds and looks at things from different angles, and for contemporary fiction we've been joined by people doing other masters in the Arts so we had input from a wide variety of sources. There were some people who had worked in Waterstones who gave us an insight into the machinery behind marketing and someone who had worked for Penguin who told us they have an entire department related to cover art ( I would like to work in this department, I'm a firm believer that in today's market you can definitely judge a book by its cover).

We identified some recent trends that we have noticed, and of course finished up talking about the current craze for Vampires - the hot-blooded HBO series True Blood based on the books by Charlaine Harris and the sightly anemic Twilight franchise masterminded by Stephenie Meyer, both of which have led to the the hastily put-together teen TV series, 'The Vampire Diaries' (also apparently based on a series of books, by L J Smith).

One of the girls who had worked in Waterstones had read an industry piece which openly stated that they had decided Angels were going to be the new trend, but for my money Werewolves are the new Vampires, with the continuing success of the BBCs Being Human, the never-ending interest in Taylor Lautner's abdominal muscles, and the upcoming film The Wolfman with Emily Blunt. I said this at the time, and The Independent newspaper just did a feature on it, so clearly I'm onto something.

Our tutor told us that her specialist interest was misery memoirs and the publishing phenomenon they have become, so I'm sure she'd appreciate this picture my friend took recently in WH Smith

Can you spot the odd one out? As her mother says on her blog Claire, after "spotting an anomaly picked up Dr Brooke Magnanti book (Belle de Jour) which had been miscast as a tragedy, and replaced it with the book about Tony Blair". Claire I salute you.

As for what I think about all these behind-the-scenes machinations, I find it a little depressing. The commerciality of literature; books as units for sale, seems to be the antithesis of why we read. But it would be naive to suppose the publishing industry could survive without it, and as some of us mentioned in the class, it's easy enough to step back and make your own decision either by buying from charity shops, or checking out my new pet favourite, Green Metropolis which I find very helpful in getting hold of slightly out of date course books, and is environmentally friendly as you are 'recycling' the books, and they donate 5p from every sale to the Woodland Trust.

We finished up talking about literary prizes and the televised book clubs of Oprah and Richard & Judy and the immense impact they have on book sales, which most of us were relatively positive about. As someone pointed out, at least it gets people reading, which I don't believe can be a bad thing. As for my fellow creative writers, it's all very well to be snobbish about the 'RJ effect' - and plenty are - but it seems silly to me to dismiss the kind of "high-brow middle-brow" books that R & J promote and focus solely on highly literary novels when most of us aren't writing them. Although I largely agree with one of our tutors who told us to ignore the industry and 'just write' I do think we should spend some time reading books which are from the same genre as ours - if only out of courtesy to our fellow writers.

Maybe we should all be thinking more about what books we buy, when, where, and why? You might be surprised at how little influence you have over your own purchases.

Vive la revolucion!

i made a fire for you, and now the whole forest is on fire

2010-01-27T07:34:00.000-08:00

Some lovely links, just to assure you I'm not an Amish girl sitting at home crocheting by candle-light and badmouthing the internet as the source of broken Britain.

Please don't talk to me I fall in love so easily is a gorgeous blog by Tiger from Stockholm made up of images of words, it's a bit emo if you read them all in one go but there are some beautiful ones and I think they could make interesting writing prompts. These are some of my favourites

sooth brush

- useful reminder!

we heart it

- creepy / cute

silhouettemasterpiecetheatre

- wrong but fun!

- yeah baby

we heart it
- another useful reminder!

hello tiger hellstrom

translation: "I made a fire for you, and now the whole forest is on fire"

- typewriter love

Then check out fuckyeahfrenchcinema if you want to feel arty and pretentious - for best results position yourself in a cafe with an espresso a cigarette and some dark glasses.

And last but definitely not least @worsethings clued me into this tumblr devoted to songs with hand claps in them (my favourite kind). Check out Clap Your Hands for mucho mucho fun.

Spaced Girl

2010-01-26T07:20:00.000-08:00

via please don't talk to me I fall in love so easily

This month I went Facebook-free for January. The idea was that in its absence I would learn and grow and become a better person, I would perfect my Spanish, write my novel, explore Classical music, learn to crochet, maybe take an evening class in pottery, or poetry...or whatever it was they did in the days before Facebook. Actually what they did in the days before Facebook was Myspace - I guess I'm talking about waaay back, in the Dark Ages...before the internet!

I have nothing against Facebook specifically but I have a fear of habit-forming and becoming overly-reliant on various crutches - it makes me feel trapped, no doubt as a result of various deep-seated psychological issues. Alcohol, drugs, coffee, television, smoking, social-networking, to me they're all as bad as each other if you can't live without them. So for January I've given up crack cocaine and Facebook, y'know just to reassure myself I don't need them.

And what have I achieved? Well needless to say the novel is far from written, my Spanish no es bueno, and having done some research into what you can actually make by crocheting I decided ponchos weren't really my thing anyway... I have totally gotten into Classical music though -this Mozart bloke is my favourite although I quite like Vivaldi too. Next I'm going to check out Beethoven, if only so that my first thought upon hearing his name won't be that St Bernard dog from the film.

As the month draws to an end I definitely feel like I've broken the habit and although I will be logging back on in February I will try to only do so at the beginning or end of the day and not as a reflex action. As for how useful it was I'm not sure - it was a lot harder to arrange things with friends and as many of them live so far away I didn't see most of them in person anyway but ended up texting and emailing instead which hardly seems better than Facebook, especially when most of us have it on our mobile now. I think it did help me to create a more calming and less distracting workspace though. Reading Tania Hershman's impressively honest piece on her writing regimen I was struck by how big a part the internet plays in our daily 'routine'; she writes:

wherever I am, I need to check the following things before I start:

email
The Amazon UK ranking of my book
The Amazon US ranking of my book
The sitemeter stats page for my book, my personal website and my blog
My book’s page on Gardners, the UK book distributors, to see if the number has gone down
Facebook Inbox
My Facebook Wordscraper; Lexulous and Scrabble games (more on that later)
My Zoetrope online writing groups
The WriteWords calls for submissions and jobs page
email (again, it’s been a while)
The Bookarazzi “bloggers with book deals” forum
My blog, to look at the Blog Roll of blogs I follow and see if anyone’s posted a new blog post
Duotrope’s What’s New page, just to check that the submissions I have sent out are still in the “haven’t been rejected yet even though they are sending out rejections” state.

I have just read over that list and think perhaps I am insane. It’s a kind of compulsion. Am I alone in this?

(Read the rest of her article here.)

I don't think she's insane or alone in this but I wonder what us writer types would have done before the internet, if we would achieve more without it or if we would just have procrastinated in different ways. I suspect the latter might be true as in my crack-free and Facebook-free month I feel like I've watched a lot more television, drank more coffee, toyed with taking up smoking more often than usual, and played too many google fights. Incidentally 'Facebook' beats 'God' in a google fight, if you were wondering.

On the television front I have become obsessed with Spaced, Channel Four's 90's sitcom about Tim and Daisy, two twenty-somethings who meet by chance in a cafe and then pose as a couple in order to get a flat advertised for 'professional couples only'. As I watched I have become more and more convinced that I in fact am Daisy Steiner. Let's look at the facts people, we both
* babble when nervous, and in fact most of the time actually
* are skilled procrastinators
* work on typewriters
* wanted to be Elvis when we grew up (if there's a better ambition I have yet to hear it)
* pretend to be writers
* get a bit carried away in job interviews.

* oh and yes we're both called Daisy, I have to admit it is nice to have a character with your name who isn't a cow (or occasionally a dog).

Quite how Spaced has passed me by all these years I don't know, but I'm almost glad I saved it up until I could appreciate it fully. I certainly empathised with Daisy in one episode where she is working another minimum-wage job and being made to mop the floor after an already grueling shift finally snaps "I've had enough of this, I'm a Writer, I'm creative! I'm not a ... mopper!" To which the scary boss lady replies "They're all writers Daisy." And explains that all the staff, even the scary bearded madman (who writes haikus) are 'writers' just making ends meet. One of them claims to have been published in '97, "in 98 I came here." he says dolefully. It's a useful reminder that just because you call yourself a 'Writer' doesn't mean a thing unless you actually write something, something good. So stop procrastinating and get on with it, yeah?

(the real) Daisy has left the building xx

ps I was kidding about the crack

pps about giving it up I mean

Hype

2010-01-24T04:56:00.000-08:00

Hola cariños
A big shout out to Kate Feld at the excellent The Manchizzle who has sent a bunch of people my way this week! Shame it coincided with my whinge about existential crises but if you are a new reader take heart, I'm exceedingly sunny-tempered as a rule.

Thanks to those of you who got in touch to say you felt the same way - writing is essentially a lonely profession so it's especially nice to hear from you! A few people have been asking about the MA and I promise I will do a post on it in the near future, but in the meantime if anyone is wondering whether it would be right for them, send me a message via facebook or twitter (links in the column to the right) or feel free to email me at
daisystellabaldwin(at)googlemail.com

Lots of good things in the works for 2010, I'm back at university in February where I will be taking a course on contemporary writing (at last!) and nursing the novel back to health. I also have a backlog of author interviews lined up to do for the newly revitalised and extended Lancashire Writing Hub which is now also going to function as a platform for your writing-
"Sign up and in exchange for not one of your English pounds, you can join a community who will read your work and give feedback on it - and be able to practice giving your own feedback and suggestions. This community is moderated by a panel of peer experts drawn from creative writing groups in Central and West Lancashire so you can post safe in the knowledge that feedback will be constructive, relevant and useful."

Sounds fun, see you there! xxx

my tutor says blogs are just diary shit

2010-01-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had one of those crises of confidence (yes I did just google the plural of crisis) where you wish your future self could come and hold your hand and tell you that everything is going to work out fine.

Oddly this post-adolescent funk came to a head midway through watching the new Sherlock Holmes film - I'm not sure what that says about the film, more on that later - I was suddenly convinced that I am hideously deluded in my attempts to be a writer, that I should be out somewhere doing something that would at least be useful to somebody, such as teaching or... well teaching.

Perhaps it's a result of anticlimax after handing my submission and essay in on Monday. -Although that would imply some sort of climax (NB did I ever blog about the Literature & Sex talk with Will Self and Martin Amis?) which wasn't the case. The novel I've been tinkering with all over the Christmas break is having serious teething problems and in the end I handed in some short stories instead. This from a previously short-story phobic!

It's difficult investing so much in something and then having it fall apart - like calling time on a relationship, except in relationships if you're not good for each other there's the hope that there's someone better out there for both of you, whereas with a novel if you abandon it you can't set it up with somebody else...can you? Any takers?

I'm really happy doing the MA but I'm now getting jittery about what to do with the rest of my life (isn't everyone?). I could pursue work in film/television, think about advertising (because where else can I indulge my love of puns?) go teach English in some exotic place and write, teach Primary in the UK and write, or go to some cool city like Edinburgh or London and get some crappy job and write. Either way I don't think I can stay here in this small town feeling snowed-in even after the big thaw. Answers on a postcard please.

Anyway, the film was... A good film I think. I've been hearing things about it since 08 and I always thought Robert Downey Jr was a potentially brilliant piece of casting - not sure they totally pulled it off though. I would elaborate but the lovely people over at The Lesser of Two Equals have already written everything I want to say, so go there and check it out.

And then go here and donate some money to help the Haitian people because as I remind myself, having existential crises is a luxury most people can't afford.

You could also donate to La Esperanza de Granada, which is the charity I worked with in Nicaragua and get regular updates from. They do amaaaaazing work on a teeny tiny budget.

much love from a hazy Daisy x

water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

2010-01-14T03:33:00.000-08:00

Pictures taken this year by the frozen canals and rivers.

The locations, in order, are the Lancashire canal in twilight (this was before my when-to-use-flash masterclass with Andrew but I think the effect is pretty cool anyway) the Thames after sunset, Brock valley after a blizzard and the canal by day.

And on a vaguely related topic, I had to get a picture of these urinals (that's a sentence I never thought I'd be saying) at Barton Grange...

pretty huh?

Hope you're all surviving the cold snap! Now back to the essay...

unnatural selection

2010-01-10T04:57:00.000-08:00

My novel starts in a school field, and is requiring a knowledge of sports days, children, nature and summer, all of which have come back to me vividly even in the bleak midwinter. My Dad's a country lad from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, and when visiting we would spend hours walking in forest, playing in the ferns and bracken, trying to catch grasshoppers in the garden and dipping our feet into St Anthony's Well -

which is a truly beautiful spot in the heart of the forest made by the monks of Flaxley and thought to have healing properties. Okay so scientifically the water has no measurable benefits, but I think the setting has healing properties.

It took me awhile to realise this, but I'm a bit of country girl at heart. I'm computer-literate, I blog, I listen to Spotify and rely on wikipedia way too much, I know what Twitter and Tumblr are - but I also know the difference between cowslip and clover, which plants are poisonous and which berries are edible, which animals live in a sett a warren and an earth. Which is more important in today's world? Perhaps knowing that cygnet is the correct name for a young swan is unimportant - a rose by any other name and all that. Perhaps knowledge of nature is becoming obsolete, only useful in pub quizzes? Whereas knowing what Facebook is would be considered vital information by my generation.

Still I was sad to see this article on the newly discovered Next Nature blog. Apparently the Oxford Junior Dictionary has removed nature terms from it's latest edition, in favour of technical terms which young children would be more likely to come across....

According to Vineeta Gupta, who heads children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, changes in the world are responsible for changes in the book. “When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance,” she said. “That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed.”

Some words taken out:Adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.
Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow
Some of the words put in:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue.
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro.
Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph.

This actually makes my heart hurt. If my kids knew what a database, an attachment, a block graph and a blog were but the words heron, catkin, primrose and horse chestnut meant nothing to them I would be horrified. More importantly, surely kids should know the names of the vegetables they're supposed to be eating - cauliflower and spinach and leek and radish and rhubarb being some of the words removed. There's obviously some truth in their claim that they are just reflecting a changing world, but by actively selecting the words they feel children ought to know, surely they have a certain social responsibility? Reading this brought me to Daily Mail reader heights of outrage, so I'm going to leave off my irate ramblings and go make some tea.

...funnily enough the word 'endangered' is one of the words which was added.

I want today, I want tomorrow, I want to wear them like braids in my hair and I don't want to share them!

2010-01-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lovely readers - Christmas and New Year have been fairly hectic and now am busy busy writing my second essay and my first creative submission of 6000 words! As a reward for re-reading the whole of Madame Bovary yesterday and writing two thousand relatively creative words this morning I watched Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this afternoon. Much like Bill Murray, Johnny Depp makes all of his films worth seeing. This version is closer to the book and perfect material for the quirky dream team which is Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton. The children were really well-cast but for me they couldn't beat the original Veruca Salt, played by Julie Dawn Cole, who was something of a childhood idol for me!

She had a fabulous 70's party dress in red with black buttons and a white peter pan collar, Farrah Fawcett waves and an unwavering self-belief. She also had the best song of the film. So she was a bit of a brat, I blame the parents. Enjoy!

making a good film is like baking a good pie

2009-12-27T06:39:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of films in 2009, one in Houston Texas, one at the cinema in Managua, two in Leon, several on pirate DVDs in the volunteer house in Granada, and a lot more since I came home. I've included some DVDs which I only saw this year so they were new to me. I've mini-reviewed them for your delectation.

Slumdog Millionaire **** Evocative, fresh and fun but didn't (& perhaps couldn't) live up to the hype for me.

Revolutionary Road **** I read the book first and unsurprisingly it didn't quite do it justice. I felt it reduced the story to yet another tale of philandering husbands whereas in the novel it's more a frank analysis of their shared delusions and the mistakes they both make.

Bride Wars (Guerra de Novias) * Apallingly crap, I expected more judicious film choices from you Anne Hathaway. A one-dimensional premise which descends into the worst sort of slapstick - you laugh and you feel bad afterwards. The film equivalent of junk food.

Volver ***** A masterpiece, my first Almodovar film and I will definitely be seeking out Habla con Ella next.

Milk **** Sean Penn is amazingly authentic and the true story of Harvey Milk is that rare blend of socially important and genuinely interesting. On a shallow note, James Franco is as divinely gorgeous as ever..

Yes Man *** I have a girl crush on Zooey Deschanel. I daresay without it the film would have got less stars.

He's Just Not That Into You (Simplamente No Te Quiero) *** Good premise but ultimately collapses under the weight of it's numerous different storylines. A truly terrible choice of role for Scarlett Johannson. Worth seeing girlies if only for the scene where Justin Long tells Ginnifer Goodwin (another girl crush) "You are my exception". Altogether now....

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ** There's a reason Fitzgerald wrote it as a short story, this didn't sustain my interest and I stopped watching half-way through. Presumably was only made because of the desire to experiment with the technological trick of reverse aging and to cash in on the success of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.

Coraline **** Delightful and to be frank one of the scariest films I saw this year!

Let The Right One In ***** Wonderfully atmospheric. To call this a Vampire Film is to mislabel it - Lindqvist's great achievement is that he manages to make the relationship between Eli and Oskar seem natural and right rather than malevolent.

Sunshine Cleaning **** Sometimes veers too far into 'winsome' territory, especially the bits with the child, but the good parts are so excruciatingly honest that this is well worth seeing. Both Emily Blunt and Amy Adams are quietly sensational.

The Proposal *** Okay so it's dumb but unlike Bride Wars it is genuinely entertaining and marginally original. The Alaska setting for most of the film is a nice touch.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince **** The best of the series I think, David Yates manages to avoid the rushed feeling of the previous installments, giving this film a wonderful pace which slows down at the right moments.

Coco Avant Channel **** A truly absorbing and memorable film. Tatou bravely dismisses the calculated whimsy of her Amelie role and is breathtaking as Channel here - a five star turn in a three star film.

(500) Days of Summer **** Disappointing. There were too many moments for me when this felt overdone and sterile. Technically perfect but I'd rather have the patchy Sunshine Cleaning over this.

Twilight: New Moon **** A sheer delight, I won't have a word said against it... except that much as I like Kirsten Stewart her monotone voice does begin to grate after a while.

An Education **** Surprisingly hilarious, Rosamund Pike is just as much a winner as the much-feted Carey Mulligan here in a brilliantly comic turn. At first I thought Peter Sarsgaard was miscast but on reflection I think he is the right choice for this strangely asexual and essentially weak womaniser. Definitely worth seeing.

Up ***** Had me in tears practically all the way through, an example of perfect animation.

Bright Star ***** Old Amis says few if any books are worthy of 10/10 and I imagine he'd say the same about films but I couldn't give this anything less than five stars. It's brilliance lies in the restraint with which Jane Campion handles this so-called 'epic romance' - she never gives into sensationalism or melodrama and instead quietly, languidly unspools this honest story of love and poetry.

Still to see:
Moon
Adam
Julie & Julia
Paranormal Activity
Sherlock Holmes
Brideshead Revisited

Best Actors of 2009: Ben Whishaw, Emily Blunt (with the caveat that I think Carey Mulligan will be the Best Actress of 2010)

Best Film: This being subjective I will state my own personal remit for a great film - for me making a good film is like baking a good pie, you handle the pastry as lightly as possible! For me perfection is when there is no intrusive evidence of the director's own cleverness. And so the award goes to Bright Star.

Best Film You Might Have Missed: Sunshine Cleaning

Biggest Turkey: I'm going to be bold and judge this on the most disappointing film rather than the worst; there are always terrible films but to take great ingredients and create something below par is worse still I think. So sorry, (500) Days Of Summer, I did almost like you, and you have a great soundtrack.

Let the disagreement commence!
Happy Christmas everyone xxxxx

green around the gills

2009-12-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

We recently had a talk on Literature and Ageing with Martin Amis and Clive James, with Martin arguing that almost all good books were written by people in their thirties (only eight years to go, I better get a wriggle on) and many good authors had, in his opinion, gone off the boil in recent years. He has mentioned this to us MA-ers before and cites Henry James, Nabokov, and more recently Roth and Updike (who's dead apparently, who knew?? Must have happened whilst I was in Nicaragua, in my defence).

Clive was taking the position that being older gave you more time to reflect back on a life well lived, which he referred to - quite refreshingly I thought - as a privilege. As proof of his claim he rallied a crew led by Yeats, who, it seems to have been generally agreed, wrote his best stuff in the later years of his life, and dubiously suggested that Henry James in fact got better as he got older, it's just we aren't capable of appreciating it because it's almost too good. I agree with this, we read What Maisie Knew in class and I told everyone I hated James but then admitted it was actually that reading James made me hate myself, because I could see how good it was but I still couldn't read it. Clive had other aces in his pack but sadly I can't remember them because I'm young and it's only the middle-aged who make a virtue of remembering things; the old can't and the young don't even try.

I would have liked to have asked what they thought about writers who only started writing later in life, but couldn't think of any examples (wikipedia says Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski) but as we all retain mental faculties for longer after retirement I wonder if this might be a burgeoning trend?

Anyway as I said I liked Clive James, but was disappointed to discover his views on climate change. Apparently Clive is what they're now calling a 'climate-change denier', (not to be confused with the similarly baffling but slightly less indicative of racism, 'holocaust denier'). I don't really agree with the Guardian journalist's theory stated in the article that the old are less likely to believe in climate change because the 'fear of death' leads them to protect themselves with 'vital lies' but it's certainly interesting to read after our Literature and Ageing talk! In fact rather than being a result of his age, it's probably more likely to be the fact that he apparently reads a lot of blogs on the subject. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to nail my green colours to the mast...

One of the good and bad things about blogs is that they're an individual's unadulterated, unfiltered views and should not be used as a primary source of information. Climate change deniers will undoubtedly be able to find bloggers who claim global warming is a myth or a government con, and they might feel they have their finger on the pulse of an underground truth movement, when in reality it's the bloated carcass of conspiracy theories and Chinese whispers. (mixed metaphor?)

A big part of the problem, and it holds true for debates on Muslim extremism also, is that the media feel duty-bound to give equal press-coverage to both sides of the debate, when in reality there is a massively disproportionate amount of people in one camp and the 'debate' they are publicising was in fact won a long time ago. So they keep putting these climate change deniers forward as representing a valid perspective whereas in fact they're increasingly isolated and often financially motivated (i.e. in the pay of organisations who use fossil fuels, or government regimens who fear the notion of climate change is politically unpopular).

I met some American Republicans while I was in Nicaragua who strongly believed that although global warming might be occurring, we were not responsible. I read somewhere once that in America you could effectively pick your beliefs and then tune into a media channel which would back them up for you. This certainly seemed to be the case quite often and the rhetoric they would repeat was disturbingly sly. One friend told me he 'wouldn't be so arrogant as to believe human beings were having such an impact on a world which has been around a lot longer than we have' and I was struck by the sneakiness of the word 'arrogant' and how that turned it around on me, as if I was some sort of ego-maniacal crazy girl for thinking humanity could impact on the planet, turned it around from them being self-obsessed and arrogant to us being so. It really is an impressive piece of rhetoric and I'm sure something which was carefully thought up.

A really great book to read is 'Unspeak' by Steven Poole, which I came across during my degree and which shows you how to break down political rhetoric so you can see how you are being manipulated by the very language politicians and the media use. Highly recommended if you want to arm yourself in response to such comments.

I feel I'm on the front line, working in a store where we charge for carrier bags and I have to ask each customer whether they would like to purchase a regular bag or a bag-for-life. Bizarrely our regular bags are green and so a customer last week asked for 'one of those Green bags' but when I went to charge the bag-for-life said 'No, no, the green bag!' to which I replied 'Oh sorry sir, I thought you meant Green in a Save the Planet way, but you meant just green, the colour' which I realised shortly afterward sounded somewhat judgemental whereas in fact I was just confused.

I do think the bag thing has gotten faintly ridiculous now though. I was in Waitrose the other day on my Southern jaunt, and the girl asked if I had brought a bag with me and I said in a very small voice "Sorry no."
"So you'll be needing a bag today."
"Yes please, if that's okay."
"Will that be a bag-for-life?"
"Um no, thank you just the regular kind today."
she stared at me in disbelief, and I swear I looked round and everyone in the queue was clutching some fancy hemp bag and giving me the blackest looks - I honestly thought someone was going to vault over the grocery aisle, rugby-tackle me to the ground and stuff the plastic bag down my throat.

Ahem. Good night, keep fighting the good fight xxxxx

commercial shmercial (not my best)

2009-12-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

The last seven days have been oh so oh so long and I have learned a lot. Having been at work in the shop now for three days I feel ready to remove my 'in training' badge and step out into a brave new world of fresh and frozen food. In more interesting news, we had a talk at Uni from literary agency Mulcahy Conway, a Martin Amis seminar on his father's Lucky Jim, a talk on Literature and Ageing with Martin again and also Clive James, and a class on Roberto Bolaño's By Night in Chile.

The talk by Mulcahy Conway was interesting as I haven't ever fully understood what a literary agent actually does. As well as explaining this very eloquently, they also focused a lot on the fact that our work needed to be 'commercial'. One of our tutors later said not to worry about the emphasis they'd placed on commerciality and just write what we wanted to write and *stuff* the rest of it. I sort of agree, as the agents made a lot of the importance of having a 'hook' or a snappy summary, but in a way I think it depends on what we understand by commerciality. Having worked -albeit briefly- in film acquisitions I think I'm more aware than most on what will 'sell' but also how you sell. If a novel is good enough they will find a hook or come up with a snappy summary - that's their job and it doesn't have to be yours. I suppose I'm saying it's a moot point because if it's good it will have a selling point, even if the writer isn't necessarily aware of it.

When I was fourteen we had a music lesson which I remember vividly, where they taught us the correct combination of chords that you must use in order to create music which pleases the listener... I remember being devastated that you could pull music apart to bare mechanics and put it together in a set formula, but my Dad told me that he thought it was a load of *nonsense* and he doubted Paul McCartney sat down with our music teachers' rule book; that he just naturally wrote good music which happened to correspond to the rules. Now I wouldn't have picked McCartney as my example, but I think my Dad was right; just because they've managed to analyse the formula for greatness doesn't mean you should follow it -you should aim for greatness and everything else will fall into place. So I think it's all very well for the agents to tell us to try to be 'commercial' but in reality if it's good it will be and if it's bad it's hopeless anyway. They're basically saying 'write good novels!'

What with this talk and then the Literature and Ageing, and a talk with the poet James Fenton on Thursday (in the John Rylands Library I think there are still tickets available) I feel especially lucky to be able to listen to all these interesting people but sometimes I have to remind myself that I don't have to wholeheartedly agree with all of them. As Roberto Bolaño says in the book we discussed today, "It is good to love. It is bad to be impressionable." I think what he's trying to say is -stay open to new ideas and people, but don't lose your own identity in the process. Ain't that the truth.

QWERTYUIOP

2009-12-02T05:08:00.000-08:00

So I know you're unaccustomed to hearing from me twice in as many days but I had to tell you the exciting news I just found out - Cormac McCarthy has my typewriter! Well not exactly the same one actually, he has the Olivetti Lettera 32 -

while I have the original 22 -

(Mine is in olive green)
According to The Independent he is auctioning it off with an expected price-tag of about $20000 so much as I would like to add to my collection that is slightly out of my price range. Apparently McCarthy estimates he's written about 5m words on his so unless mine was pre-owned by Barbara Cartland before I picked it up from Barnardos (for a McCarthy-beating £2.50) my Olivetti still has a ways to got before it reaches these dizzying heights.

This one is an Italian design classic but any old typewriter is a fun thing to have. It forces you write differently because you can't just skip back and delete; you have to use white-out, so you write more slowly and with more precision - in theory anyway. They also make a satisfying clackety clack noise as you type. So go buy a typewriter, you can buy new ribbon on t'internet, and it isn't pretentious at all, honest.

pues, hasta pronto x x x

Kreativ Blogger Award

2009-12-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

Queridos,
Today I had to go see our tutor to discuss my writing thus far and my 'plan' for the future - bamboozlement! It actually went really well- she said I could get a publishing deal on the basis of the concept of the novel alone. Then she said 'now you just have to write it... So, go write it.' which reminded me there is still a long way to go... as a wise man once told me, "You judge yourself on what you know you're capable of, the world judges you on what you've actually done". Excellent for motivation though! I realise I haven't blogged much about the day-to-day realities of the MA but suffice to say I am really enjoying it and would highly recommend applying if you're thinking about it.

Anyway, enough of that, onto the most exciting news of the day, Valerie O'Riordan nominated me for a Kreativ Blogger award!! *wipes away tears of joy* Isn't it pretty?

I shall print it off and tape it to my mantelpiece (the fire broke years ago so there's no fear of setting light to it). Now there's a bunch of stuff you're supposed to do when you get the award:

* 1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
* 2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
* 3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
* 4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
* 5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
* 6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
* 7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they have been nominated.

-as listed by Valerie, whose blog, Not Exactly True is everything mine isn't e.g informative, lucid and frequently updated. Valerie actually blogs our Martin Amis seminars and stuff so go check it out. Thanks Valerie!

So,7 things you didn't know about me and probably didn't need to:
For some unfathomable reason I took Chemistry for A-level - and naturally got a 'D' grade.
I have a not-so-secret crush on the man who presents Grand Designs, Kevin McCloud. When he gives homeowners sound advice (sometimes in French & Italian both of which he's fluent in) ooh it gives me the shivers.
I once posed naked for a charity calendar (I forget which charity actually which is bad).
I'm -probably- the best speaker of Nicaraguense in the whole Kirkham area.
I was named after the treacherous Daisy from The Great Gatsby. (But fortunately not after Stella from A Streetcar Named Desire).
My great great uncle George Morton Smith was the very first Royal Correspondent. So move over Jennie Bond, I'm looking to carry on the legacy...
My life's ambition is to appear on Channel 4's Come Dine With Me.

Now for nominations! Well I'm sort of new to the whole creative blogging scene, (I think this blog is still best know as a travelogue), but I'll do my best!

I Swim Chapati is Griselda Murray Brown - it's a bit of a mouthful, but remember this name, it's gonna be famous
Inspired Together this may at first look too science-y but it is written by the best English student I ever met at Oxford, who now happens to be an American Medical Student (I hate multi-talented people, I bet she didn't get a D in Chemistry) along with her lovely husband Peter who introduced me to Borges.
Central Lancs Writing Hub
this is cheating slightly as I write for them, but this is the beating cultural heart of Preston (yes, Preston!) and well worth a visit.
No That Would Be Too Easy
A fellow MA-er Adam has just started blogging so hopefully this shiny award will convince him to continue.
Bois de Jasmin
I read so many perfume blogs but Victoria from Bois de Jasmin is the best of the lot - go here before choosing your Christmas wish-list perfume...
The Sartorialist
Oh the clothes, the beautiful beautiful clothes. (I don't think this guy needs my award as he's sort of famous already...)
Every Day I Lie A Little
Jenn Ashworth; leading the charge to put Preston on the map for something other than being the model for Charles Dickens' Coketown in Hard Times, being the first place KFC opened in the UK, the birthplace of the motorway and scene of some of the most hilarious Come Dine With Me's ever.

Thank you and Good Night xxxxx

Interview with Mark Charlesworth on the publication of his second book of poetry, In Memory of Real Trees

2009-11-28T07:27:00.000-08:00

Have finally had time to write up the interview I did with Mark, check out the newly re-born Central Lancs Writing Hub here to read, amongst other things a convincing argument for Blackpool's inner beauty, and a persuasively positive slant on the 'credit crunch'....

a little light relief

2009-11-27T10:57:00.000-08:00

Well I'm fresh from two full days training for my Christmas temp job for a well-known British High Street staple. I've never heard of anyone having so much training for a casual retail job but I certainly learned a lot. An especially alarming session taught us that if we were responsible for leaving any out of date stock on the shelves during 'stock rotation' and it was subsequently bought by a customer, we would personally be liable for a fine of £1000 per food item. They concluded with the example that if we sold ten dodgy lasagnas we could be out of pocket by £10K. I almost laughed aloud at the prospect of handing over ten thousand pounds because of off-lasagna (they'd have to prise it from my cold dead hands), and one kid actually left the training after lunch and never came back- the rest of us suspected she was scared off by this little scenario.

Scary stuff, so I was particularly amused when after a long day of training I crawled back home to Kirkham and nipped to the corner shop for some restorative alchohol where I overheard the following exchange between the cashier and bloke at the till-

"These eggs are three days out of date, is that alright?"
"Aye love that's fine."

Classic.

one for the girls

2009-11-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

Folks over at Preston Writers Network have given me my own log-in for the blog (my interview with Mark Charlesworth is coming sooooon) and it's currently my main concern not to mix up the blogs and accidentally post some of my inane wonderings on their site instead of my own... It's bound to happen at some point.

I am supposed to be reading the work of Senor Jorge Luis Borges, but unfortunately I can't understand a word of it and have instead been browsing Etsy where I have spent mucho dinero on my current obsessions: Dia de los Muertos inspired jewelery and Mexican religious icons bracelets (I had one of these from Nicaragua but it got stolen by the crims, which is sort of ironic, apparently St Jude recognises a truly lost cause when he sees one).

These purchases are currently making their way through cyberspace to the rainy Northwest of England:

I also have a big big crush on these fabulous Frida Kahlo earrings

click here if you feel the same way

and this super cool swine-flu inspired upcycled bag:

click here to see the guy's other awesome Frida creations...

but a glimmer of financial awareness stopped me from the last two purchases, divine as they are, will have to console myself with my Frida Kahlo fridge magnet that I found in Hebden Bridge last year.

Besos guapas!

true friends are like spider plants

2009-11-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the terrible lack of postings lately, I am indeed a very bad blogger. If it makes you feel any better I am also a very bad student, very bad volunteer and very bad friend! The week before last we had 'reading week' at Manchester and as a former Oxford student (Oxford does not subscribe to things as bourgeois as reading weeks) I got a little overexcited and decided to go and visit all the friends in the South whom I have been cruelly neglecting. One hellish seven-hour megabus journey, four trains, one sofa, two floors and several cafe lattes later, I was back up North after a great trip.

Unfortunately the following week it was my turn to submit writing for the workshop, and we had our first graded 3000 word essay due in on the Friday. Despite the week from hell (made worse by the inevitable cough-from-hell) I don't regret my staycation (every time I get off the train in Brighton and walk out into the strong sea-breeze and salt air my heart literally jumps) but I do wish it wasn't so hard to keep in touch with people.

Modern technology should make it easier to stay in contact, and to some extent it does - my Nicaraguan friends and other volunteers who are dotted around the world from Finland, the US, Austria, Germany, Belgium etc definitely see more of me thanks to Facebook than they otherwise would. But do we really have more friends now than people did before social networking sites? Or are our friends just further away? In the past our friends would have been predominately local, people we'd grown up with for the most part. -This is still true for some of my friends, a recent Facebook event had me checking through the guest list of a birthday party of an old schoolmate who I haven't seen for six years (!) and found that on the list of over thirty invitees there were only three who I didn't recognise; the rest had all gone to school with us. My own friends are a mixture of schoolmates, friends from six-form college (none of whom went to my highschool), friends from university, friends from travelling... No better or worse than my schoolfriend's friends I'm sure, but harder to meet up with.

Travel here is so expensive! Trying to organise a New Year's event with my friend in Edinburgh we realised that a train ticket from London would cost over £90 with a railcard... Probably not worth it, even for our delightful company. I can't help but think of Nicaragua where I lived in the same house as my closest friends and within ten minutes of everyone else I knew in the country. I remember my twenty-second birthday party which was the best birthday I've ever had and involved calling round the other volunteer houses a couple of hours before to let them know the 'Margarita Party' was on and to bring tequila and pizza round to ours. I usually hate my own birthdays, they're so stressful, but I remember looking round, margarita in hand and realising that every single person I cared about for hundreds and hundreds of miles, was in that room with me.

Travel outside of Granada was effortless too, we would spontaneously decide to hop on the 'chicken bus' to Masaya market, or the coach to Leon, or even the boat to Omatepe island, and it cost practically nothing, required no elaborate plans, no hurt feelings from people uninvited; everyone was able and welcome to come.

Being back in the Western World, with jobs and school and commitments, was always going to be more stressful, but I didn't realise how much I time I spend worrying about my social commitments and how hard it is to arrange to see amigos.

Part of me thinks we should let go, forgo Facebook and devote our time, as one friend of mine and recent Facebook exile put it 'Spend time with the people actually around me'. We'd lose friends of course, but perhaps that's the natural way of things? Mollie Baxter, at Word Soup last night was talking about her home, and those 'spider-plants that refuse to die' and I thought that's what true friends are like: At any given point in your life you can look around your extended social circle and pick the people who you honestly think you'll stay close with, 'friends for life', but more often than not, a couple of years later, you find you were wrong. Not because you've fallen out, or they've undergone some massive personality transplant but because they simply fell out of your life, and in truth... you don't miss them. The people that stay in your life through sheer tenacity, the spider plants of your social life, for better or for worse, are your home.

But although this is a natural process which will happen anyway, I know for my part I will continue Facebooking, texting, calling and megabus-ing in an attempt to keep as many as possible.

when the phone rings I too would like to hear words that might ease some of this

2009-10-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

Hola amigos!

Yes yes my Spanish has been reduced to mere rhetorical flourishes at the beginning and end of posts... Perhaps I should set my next short story in Nicaragua in order to make use of my knowledge of the culture and language (such as it is...) ? I certainly intend to use The Ordeal as material at some point, because one of the scant positive points to being a consummate writer is that when something horrible happens you can at least genuinely 'dine out' on it if you are able to put it into words... I intend to finally enter the Vogue Talent Contest this year and I think it would be the perfect topic for the 'real life event' section you are required to write.

For the fiction workshop this week we've been reading a short story by Lorrie Moore called 'People Like That Are The Only People Here' which is about a Writer Mother whose baby has a tumour and how her husband keeps encouraging her to write about it so that they can get some money towards the baby's treatment, but she struggles to narrate something so horrific.

Along these lines, in the workshop we were asked to produce a quick 10 minute piece of writing in the style of Moore (realistic caustic chatty) and set it in a sterile hospital environment. I wrote about a woman who has just been told she is now permanently deaf. I drew on personal experience as I went permanently deaf in one ear aged fourteen but one thing that I was vaguely grateful for was that I hadn't gone completely deaf- I later read of a woman who had and was presented with a blunt note by a nurse explaining the situation after which she was discharged without any further advice. (!)

***

-What next?

-There is nothing we can do. You have gone deaf. It is irreversible. I am sorry.
She looked at the words scribbled in front of her - so it was true what they said about doctors' handwriting. The full-stops rang out like gunshots - You have gone deaf STOP It is irreversible STOP I am sorry STOP
         The doctor touched her hand briefly, pursed his lips together and then left. She watched him walk away down the corridor in his cheap brown suit - weren't they supposed to wear white coats? Perhaps they only gave white coats to the real doctors, the ones who deal with the really sick people. Because she wasn't really sick was she? So she was deaf, so what? Some people were born deaf, she was lucky, really, to have ever been able to hear. As disabilities went this one was fairly pedestrian - she hadn't lost limbs or wits, thank God. Silently she did thank Him. She had always been a positive person.
      A nurse entered the room with a discharge form, little crosses where she needed to sign, no need for words. She scrawled her signature -she could still do that after all - and began to think about what she would make for dinner - she could still cook for her family.
     She remembered playing a game as a child - Would you rather? - Would you rather be deaf or blind? they would ask in darkly thrilling tones. The question went round and round in her head, unanswered. But she hadn't had a choice - had she - in the end? When finally she began to cry, it seemed that this was the reason, that somehow it would be better if she had tossed a coin, picked at random, eenie meenie miny mo, at least then she would have herself to blame.

***

I enjoyed this exercise more than the last (writing in the style of Hemmingway about a cafe) and I have found them useful although I struggle to write so quickly. I think for a 10 minute quickie I quite like the above piece though, it makes me want to write more on the subject but frankly I'd find it too depressing! This post has gotten a little gloomy also so to cheer yourself up you must check out my new pet obsession:

contrariwise
its a website dedicated to 'literary tattoos' and has 'em all from the sublime to the ridiculous (why why why would you get a Harry Potter 'darkmark' tattoed on your forearm?) My favourite of recent times would be the person who had the title quote tattoed on their arm - taken from this gorgeous Charles Bukowski poem (Bukowski is another current obsession).

What words would you have tattoed onto your body if you were that way inclined? I'd have to go for -

Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.
- Le Petit Prince
(You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed).

But am torn between whether I would have it in French or English? The former seems pretentious and the latter untruthful...

Pues, hasta pronto, besos!

vintage

2009-10-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

Hola guapas,

So in a procrastination exercise par exellence I have been sorting through the junk in my room in order to create a feng shui -ed work space in which to write. I came across a poem I wrote when I was ten. It actually won a national competition at the time, to my amazement (my one and only literary accomplishment). ---The amazement was mostly because my primary school took four years to track me down to give me the prize money, despite only going to the local high-school down the road (apparently they thought I'd gone back to London but I think they just wanted the out-of-date book vouchers for themselves).---

In the fiction writing workshops we've been having some heated discussions on child characters and how old they should be. I'm of the opinion that it's always better to have a younger, albeit slightly precocious child rather than a character who appears younger than they are supposed to be.

The thing is unless you have kids of the appropriate age its so hard to remember exactly how developed we were at any age, mentally or personality-wise. Having once been a seven-year-old girl probably doesn't make me much more qualified than any one else to talk about the veracity of someone else's representation of a seven-year-old girl. Besides children of the same age can still vary drastically - I read once (I can't remember where) a line from a child character bemoaning the adults' tendency to say 'Darren is six too, why don't you go and play together' when they would never say 'Hi Mrs Thomas, Mr Jones is thirty-seven too, why don't you go play.' ...Although I was at a party with my great aunt last summer, where the mean age was about sixty-five, and the hostess forcibly introduced me to a bemused couple in their late thirties, saying - I kid not - 'I'll leave you young people to get acquainted'.)

Anyway I'm not sure if this rambling has a point - although I do think workshops are especially good to get feedback on the correct age for your children characters - but re-reading this poem I was struck by how a twenty-two year old could have written it, there's nothing childish about it.

Medusa

Big bright gleaming eyes,
A feeling of terror, apprehension, surprise
A concrete wave washing over me,
Turning my body into a cold, grey sea.

I strain to see through my veil of stone,
But nobody hears my silent moan
My mind is yelling, still no one hears
And nobody sees my invisible tears.

Spooky much? I think at the time I was a little bemused that my teacher was taking it on any level other than the literal representation of the Greek Myth that I intended it to be. But I find myself doing the same thing now, looking back I remember feeling exactly like this as an adolescent - scared, ignored, confused. Maybe some of this came out subconsciously, or maybe I knowingly added this element to the poem, its hard to get back into the mind of myself aged ten - perhaps ourselves as we were as children are just as alien to us as anybody else.

Oh well I suppose I better try to write something now, I'm sure my ten-year old self would be seriously unimpressed that I have achieved nothing since.

:)
xxxxx

murder your darlings

2009-10-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Hey crazy kids thanks for tuning in (I miss my zany radio-speak days)

The course is going really well, the other people are great and to my surprise even the literary forms class is proving fun and accessible. We've had two creative workshops so far where we have to write reviews of the work submitted and give feedback in class. So far this has been far more painless than I thought - I got into the habit of writing really acerbic film reviews at Momentum so I was worried about the prospect of providing face-to-face constructive criticism - but it's been fine. It helps that the standard is really high anyway but also because we're not considering the commercial aspect (at least not yet) we can be more broad-minded about the merits of a particular piece. Everyone has really different styles but that's great because its refreshing for the rest of us and gives us more experience. And after all what we write isn't necessarily what we like to read. -I am majorly obsessed with Agatha Christie paperbacks, for example, but I don't *think* my style is informed by them...

As for my own submission, D-day is looming (on Monday) and I'm struggling. Strangely I have never written a short story before (never finished one anyway). I'm more of a failed-novelist type. I could always submit excerpts from the novel idea I'm working on but I kind of feel it's not ready for other eyes yet, and I like the idea of writing something self-contained that would be complete in itself. Writing a short story is not like writing a shorter version of a novel though (it's been said before but it bears repeating) it's almost like writing poetry: The plot needs to be on a far smaller scale, and ultimately takes a back seat to characterisation and
style. I think mine has too much going on for less than 5000 words... Maybe it would be better suited to a novella. I love the word 'novella' -perhaps its just my abiding affection for writers like Salinger who never wrote very much and thus are a godsend to the Lazy Student. Or maybe I'm just a middle-of-the-road kind of gal and I need something longer than a short-story, more intense than a novel. Probably just laziness.

Another fault which shows no signs of disappearing, is my proclivity for puns - I think working with so many low-rent horror films has left its mark because every time I go to name my stories I jump for the gimmicky, the goofy and the downright childish... Perhaps a career with the Daily Mail beckons. The story I'm working on for next week is about an affair revolving around perfume and a character struggling with their identity : Base Notes. Geddit??

Well that's all for now folks, till next time-
xxxxx

What Daisy Did Next

2009-09-02T05:36:00.000-07:00

Hello loyal readers, it's been a while..! I confess I'm one of those people where no news is bad news - I've spent the Summer relentlessly applying and interviewing for various jobs but with no success. I hesitate to blame all my woes on the current universal scapegoat "the credit crunch" but it is definitely affecting employment opportunities, especially here in the North West. Loads of places offer unpaid internships in lovely London, but if you don't live there and aren't an heiress, you're somewhat priced out of the market...

But worry not! Luckily I have been offered the opportunity to duck out of the doom and gloom of the economic crisis via the tried and tested route of Further Education. As of today I am a proud Postgraduate student of the University of Manchester, enrolled on their MA course in Creative Writing for this year!

I sent in the prologue of the novel I've been working on for awhile, and interviewed with them yesterday for a last-minute place on this year's course. Ironically the credit-crunch actually helped me out in that it forced a couple of students to switch from full-time to part-time, freeing up two places a couple of months before the course started. I've spent the morning reading through the registration information and it sounds like a great opportunity. There's fortnightly masterclasses with Martin Amis, weekly writing workshops and the opportunity to study an option from the American and English Literature Masters. They also offer several (unpaid) internships in various posts including publishing, writing and curating. Best of all it's all based in Manchester which is a great city and only an hour away by train so I can save my money and stay at home. Perfecto. Maybe I was inspired by the Nicaraguan air, where famously everyone is to be assumed a Poet unless proven otherwise.

So I'll be blogging regularly about my progress with the novel, the workshops, and the no doubt entertaining world of Other People's Writing.

Hasta pronto amigos (y admiradores) x x x x

Beltane

2009-05-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

Well I've been home a couple of weeks now and I'd be lying if I said I'd got used to the cold! When I first arrived back everyone kept going on about a 'heat-wave' which would make it easier to acclimatise... I admit when I went down to London for the interview it was fairly sunny, but here in the North it was freezing as usual! So I decided to brave the worst weather the British Isles had to offer... and went off to Scotland to visit Griselda!

Everyone back in Granada has been keeping me up to date with all the latest stories and gossip, my favourite tale has to be from Eleanor -who told me that the children all miss me and Alfredo asked if I was on my aeroplane yet :) Apparently, Alfredo and Pancho came in one morning without Miguel (their cousin), telling everyone how Miguel wasn't in school because he'd been kicked by a cow and had had to go to hospital! So that day after class Eleanor and Jazmin rushed over to their house to see if there was anything they could do - and they'd made the whole thing up!! This made me laugh a LOT, although it is very naughty ;)

It was lovely to see Gris again, incredibly it has been over a year since she ran off to India to volunteer in a school, and she only got back a month or so ago. You can read about her amazing experiences (which are extremely well-written) in her blog 'I Swim Chapati', which I link to under 'Amigos'. Comparing notes made me realise I had a very unusual experience in Nicaragua, in that I both felt I was doing something very worthwhile, and yet also had a great social life. I was really lucky there were so many cool volunteers from all over the world, so I experienced a lot of different cultures, not just Nicaraguan.

Back to Britain, whilst in Edinburgh Griselda and I went with some of her friends to celebrate 'Beltane'; the Pagan celebration of fertility and Spring. I dressed up in my best Pagan outfit (which included fur-lined boots and a lot of layers of wool) and we set off up a hill in the dark, after I'll be honest, quite a lot of wine, clutching plastic bottles of vodka and Apple Tango (Oh Flor de Cana how I miss you).

It was all very strange and pleasantly unsupervised. I've been to the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge a couple of time, which is very similar (lots of fire and pagan-esque chanting, everyone stoned) but that's always militantly organised - I suppose to protect the stones as much as the people. Up in Edinburgh it was complete chaos, pitch black, with naked men and women daubed in red body paint dancing and cartwheeling in small bands, then marching in a procession across the hill, with teenage boys excitedly taking pictures of the naked girls chests.

Much fun was had by all and whilst I'm not entirely convinced that people don't just join the 'Edinburgh Pagan Society' simply for the prospect of being able to dance naked in a public place, in disguise (and lets face it, I probably would too) it was a great way of welcoming Summer, and hopefully some warmer weather!

Ayudar

2009-04-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

If you're interested in finding out more about La Esperanza, the charity I volunteered with, check out their website, and if you can, please do donate

HERE

These are some of the things which have been achieved so far this year with past donations and the help of volunteers:

Projects in 2009 – Current projects

In the schools

Volunteers tutoring children in six schools on a daily basis – helping children with the basics of reading, writing and math, along with sports, art and craft.
Volunteers teaching English in eight schools.
Volunteers running after school reading programs in five communities.
Volunteers coaching and organizing Little League baseball teams from two schools.
Contriuted to the salary of five teachers throughout the school year. (Ongoing)
Paid the salary of a computer teacher for La Epifania high school students.
Supplied Art and craft materials, sporting equipment, pencils, pens, paper, story books, puzzles and other educational aids in the schools of Elba Zamora, Elena Arellano, Angele Morales, Salomon de la Selva, Juan Diego and La Epifania. (Ongoing)
Supplied copies of worksheets and exams for the children in the schools of La Inmaculada, Elba Zamora, Elena Arellano, Angele Morales, Salomon de la Selva, Juan Diego and La Epifania. (Ongoing)
Currently building a new school in San Ignacia.

Health in the schools and the community

Paid the salary of a school/community nurse. (Ongoing)
Suppied all medicines to the school nurse. (Ongoing)
Given children's vitamin tablets to all the children in pre school/kindergarten and grade one to improve their nutrition during the years when active learning development can be affected by lack of nutrition. (Ongoing)
Organized dental checks and taken children for free dental work from the school of La Epifania,and Elenea Arellano, as well as taking children from the schools of Juan Diego, Angela Morales and Elba Zamora, and covering the cost of that dental work.
Taking children with eye problems to the opticians, and when necessary to an opthalmologic. Several children have been treated for eye parasites and many children have been fitted with eyeglasses. (ongoing)

Other community projects

Hosting Sponsorships for 78 children to attend secondary school paying all their costs. (Ongoing)
Hosting University Scholarships for 9 young people attending University on the weekends receiving a basic living stipend to work in the schools alongside our volunteers on weekdays. This provides continuity in the schools, role models for the children and enables young people to attend university who would otherwise have to struggle with employment in order to help their families.
Continuing to collect used clothing, footwear etc. and helped the local women to organize a twice a year ‘Bargain Sale Day’ where things are sold for 1 to 5 cordobas making them affordable to the very poor. These funds are then held for the communities to use for food when they have Fiesta’s in the schools, for Mother’s Day (a very special celebration in Nicaragua), International Childrens Day, and Graduation Day at the end of the school year. (Ongoing)
Held a six week course to prepare students who are commencing in high school in order to help bridge the gap between a village primary school and a Secondary College in the town.

Mi despedida

2009-04-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

I had a lovely last three days in Nicaragua.

On Friday we went to watch the baseball - 'beisbol' - Granada vs. Matagalpa. I'll be honest I barely glanced at the game, which I don't understand, and spent my time people-watching, sipping Tona beer and eating incredibly cheap street food - quesillo for 10 cords and a taco for 5.

I saw...

A ball was hit out of the pitch, landing close to where we were sitting (I screamed and ducked, evidencing again why I was never picked for sports teams) and about 15 people dived on top of it, nearly crushing a boy who looked about 5 and who narrowly escaped with his life as grown men kicked him to the ground.....

......Yet another creepy guy who took a liking to me, who decided I must be from Matagalpa (in the mountains) as the people are paler there, and kept offering me a private tour of the pitch at night (!) .....

......Two little boys accompanied by their mum, who wandered up to the wire seperating the spectators from the pitch, pulled down their pants and companiably weed through the holes.....

Ah Nicaragua, how I miss thee! (We won btw! I think!)

Then on Saturday Luke and I finally went kayaking, which I've wanted to do ever since Sam, Eleanor, Anni, Kathy, Mariel and Claire went whilst I had to stay home and sort out my insurance claim.

I feel like I didn't make the most of the lake whilst I was in Granada. Before I went I assumed it would be like the focal point of the town, like Brighton and the beach, or Coniston and the Water (- just a little advert for my part of the world, visit Cumbria!) But actually it was easy to forget the lake was there at all: despite the fact its only 10 minutes down the main street I think only went there three times, which is awful... my defence is that I was a volunteer not a tourist *ahem*

I went once on the free boat trip around the isletas that was organised for all of La Esperanza, once on a lazy afternoon walk and once kayaking. Its a pretty walk down along the shore which is dotted with little bars and restaurants and very popular with the locals. Almost all my kids in Preschool told me they had been to 'the beach' during Semana Santa, and it is easy to forget that its a freshwater lake until you see the cows placidly walking in the shallows, drinking.

Luke and I had been planning this little venture for awhile, and I'm really glad we managed to get it together to go before I went. The boat was this funny inflatable thing and we didn't take a guide, which meant a lot of dead ends and narrow misses but a lot of fun. The little isletas were all thick with jungly undergrowth and bursting with wildlife; we saw a cow swimming serenely from one isleta to another, several regal looking herons and a bird flying with a fish struggling in its mouth. At one point we just lay down and floated for awhile and it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, the only sounds were the beautiful orange and green birds which ocasionally darted past in a burst of colour. This was until a boat full of Nica tourists steamed past and people started taking pictures of us (gringos; perpetually interesting obviously). Luke seemed determined to live up to the gringo loco image, and after waving to the boat, jumped into the lake for a swim, narrowly avoiding capsizing us.

However, we made it back alive and relatively dry. We had a shoreside lunch and I think Luke made some sort of garlic-filled afternoon snack at some point after this, but I really should have eaten some dinner as that evening was Max's grand 24th birthday and I would really like to remember more of it!

Max bought lots of Flor de Cana for his lovely El Martirio housemates (thanks Maxwell!) and I decorated the casa with flowery fairy lights and judiciously-placed sheets over dubious couches, before painting my goodbye brick on the volunteer wall. At the party were some volunteers from Casas de Esperanza, (not to be confused with La Esperanza de Granada, but a great organisation nonetheless), and one of them was from Oxford and was friends with quite a lot of people from college. Probably it was the Flor de Cana, but it felt incredibly strange to be chatting to a complete stranger, in the middle of central America, about people from St Annes... Its a small world.

At about 3.30 Felipe the taxi driver came round to take me to the airport (!) which was a bit of a shock for everyone as I wasn't supposed to go until the following day. For awhile I thought I'd slept for a full 24 hours and was actually supposed to go, but no, there had been a mistake. Poor Felipe having to get up in the middle of the night two days in a row!

On Sunday, with Charley's amazing organisational help, I had a leaving meal at 'TelePizza', with all the people I'm going to miss HEAPS! The charity and the schools and the teachers and students were all amazing, but I feel especially lucky to have met so many incredible volunteers. Not just people who were there to say goodbye to, but also those who went earlier (Yacoba, Florian, Paula, Cassie, Sophie, Tighe and others).

Wonderful wonderful Mariel had made me another beautiful card like she did for my birthday, and asked everyone to write in it, which is going to be a much-treasured souveneir of my Nica time. Mariel, Kathy and Anni (sorry if I've missed anyone out here) had also bought me a lovely bottle of Elizabeth Arden sunflowers perfume, which was completely unexpected and very sweet. I love when scents remind you of people and places, and this one will always remind me of good friends :)

After managing (for the most part) not to cry, I said goodbye, had a quick drink at the famous Centrallito, and then headed back to belatedly start packing. As I had foolishy decided to leave at 3.30 in the morning, Charley and Luke stayed up with me whilst I packed, and Kathy, Anni, Mariel and Laura went to sleep and woke up at this horrible time to say adios (Thankyou chicas!)

And so my time in Nicaragua finally came to an end. This has been a ridiculously long post but it felt like a painfully short time and I miss the country and everyone already. Recently with new volunteers ariving I've had to repeat the abduction story a lot, and everyone seems suprised afresh that I stayed on afterwards. In all honesty it isn't something I even think of when I look back - I feel incredibly lucky for the amazing memories I have.

con amor, abrazos para todo

x x x

¡Buen viaje!

2009-04-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

I found out yesterday that I got offered an interview with Working Title!!

I´m so suprised and I realised I really hadn´t mentally prepared for the fact I might be leaving here so soon, I was so convinced I wouldn´t get it... I didn´t feel I´d done as good a job of the script report as I could have and it just felt so rushed and scrambled, but the end product was probably not as bad as I imagined.

So now all of a sudden, it seems, I leave in the early hours of Monday morning and the interview is on Friday en Londres. I have this recurring fear that I´ll roll up and say ¡Hola! ¿Como esta? and kiss the interviewer on both cheeks como una Nica chica and the interviewer will just stare at me nonplussed. Its very hard to imagine that at exactly this time next week I will be in England wearing smart (warm) clothes and getting the train back up to Blackpool post-interview.

Everyone here was really happy for me but also sad that I´m leaving and its the same for me! Eleanor and I had some of the teachers over for lunch on wednesday and told Teacher Jazmin that today was my last day, so she suggested we take all the kids on a walk through the local area and look at where some of them live. It was so much fun and the kids were so cute all holding hands and telling me where they lived.

Jazmin explained it was my last day and throughout the day little hands would keep hugging me and saying goodbye. We had some music and danced and again Josue made me laugh so much as he´s usually so serious but put on some music and he starts swinging his hips like a dancing queen. One of the mothers had made especially nice food with spaghetti and chicha - a local specialty drink which between you and me almost made me sick but we all had a great fiesta.

Jazmin wrote on the board ´Gracias a tu, cariño Teacher Daisy´and we took some pictures of all the children which Eleanor is kindly going to email me. Alfredo drew me a picture of my plane home, and then he and some of the others drew a big picture of me holding Jerry, standing next to Eleanor with Alfredo in the middle, it was so cute! Alfredo explained I could tell it was me as he had made sure to made my eyes VERY BIG. Then Jazmin folded the two big drawings into an origami school to remind me of La Epifania, and a giant paper aeroplane to wish me a good flight! She turned Alfredo´s plane picture into a fan which was very welcome as its still meltingly hot here right now.

After a final hug from all of them I said goodbye (yes I did cry).

I now only have two full days left here and I intend to make the most of them! ¡Fiestas todos la noches!

besos, Teacher Daisy x x x

¡Feliz pascua!

2009-04-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

A lot to catch up on recently -

I managed to make the deadline for the Working Title script report, although it was ridiculously hard to focus whilst so far away in such different surroundings. It didn´t help that after a hard day´s work (ish) I went to a party with everyone else, intending to only stay for an hour or so, and we ALL forgot our keys and locked ourselves out of our house. This meant staying at the party and running home at dawn to retrieve the document, make some last minute changes and send it off just in time! Of course just after emailing it I found the usual errors but for better or for worse, I was finished. Now I just had to wait and see whether I was going home or not... I had mixed feelings about the outcome as I really want the job, but I equally really love it here and don´t want to go home! Charley kept saying how much she hoped I didn´t get asked to interview, which I´m sure she meant nicely!

So on Thursday I was free to go to Leon. I almost didn´t go as I´ve been before, but it was a great group of people (Cassie, Nicky, Stijn, Florian, Kenny) and so I figured it would be fun anway :)

Unfortunately for the others everything was closed for Semana Santa (less sad for me as I have already been to the numerous museums and art galleries), but we had a nice day on thursday chilling out in the hostel (Via Via) and cafes, and going to see ´Guerra de Novias´ or Bride Wars at the cinema. Florian and Stijn (Kenny wasn´t feeling well) initially refused to go in but later sheepishly joined us, sat together and giggled all the way through like teenagers, it was very funny. The film itself was less funny and I am not impressed with Anne Hathaway (from Rachel Getting Married to this? ¿Por que?) but it was a good night.

On Friday we went to watch the tradicional Semana Santa sawdust carpets being made and I´m so glad we did, it was one of the highlights of my trip. They block off a couple of interconnecting streets like we do for Club Day at home, and shape large squares with planks of wood. Then they fill them with a layer of wet sawdust, stamp it down and smooth it out, and then they start to create the pictures. They used vividly dyed wet sawdust in violent shades of fushia, lime green, lemon yellow and sapphire blue, and shaped extraordinarily complex scenes from the bible or religious pictures. We set up camp outside a Pulperia (corner shop) and watched one in particular, which they worked on for hours and became Jesus praying, with a golden-winged angel perched behind him (complete with sparkly halo) and flowers and corn to decorate the rays of light emmanating from his head. It was amazing. We came back later to walk around and see all the other carpets, but this one remained my favourite, the guy was a real artist.

Later on in the evening there is a big procession from the church and the carpets get destroyed underfoot - very tabula rasa. I would have loved to see this but unfortunately Florian got robbed on the way back from visiting a fort in the afternoon and so we never returned to see the procession. A lot of my friends here have now had nasty experiences like this and its a real shame because apart from anything else it completely destroys your faith in the local people, most of whom are lovely.

So Leon was a trip to remember and we said goodbye to Cassie and Florian on Monday. ¡Buen viaje!

Feliz pascua is, belatedly, Happy Easter, and on Easter Sunday back in Granada (with quite a bad hangover induced by ron plata) I got up early to make coloured eggs with faces which is what we do at home (where I live anyway) and I went to Catholic mass at the cathedral, which was an interesting experience!

Missing family and friends at Easter, I hope you´re all taking a well-earned break!

con amor
Daisy x x x

Work in progress

2009-04-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

So its Semana Santa over here, but instead of my planned trip to the mountains I´m still here in Granada. I found out on Saturday that I got through to the shortlist for an internship with Working Title films, which I applied for just before I left Texas. I know 1600 people applied so I´m excited to find out I got so far but its very unlikely I´d actually get the job as I have so little experience. However, I have to at least try which means that I´ve spend the last few days in 37 degree heat trying to write a script report for the deadline on Wednesday. Fortunately they agreed to email me the information when they found out I was in Nicaragua, but I had to sign and scan a confidentiality agreement which was a little tricky, many thanks to Pauline who let me use the office equipment to sort it out!)

The only thing is the first round of interviews (there will be 2 apparently) is on the 23 and 24th of April, so if I find out I got through to that then I will have to fly home in couple of weeks. If not then I´m planning on extending my stay until the third week of May, with an extra week in school and then two weeks travelling in Guatemala.

What might happen is I get the interview, have to go home and then don´t get any further, which would be annoying just because it cuts short my time here. Still, it is a dream job and I was due to go home around then anyway... you can´t have everything!

The first day here after everyone left to go travelling was so hot and boring Charley and I nearly lost our minds! I think it was the adjustment from usually living with so many people to having the place completely to ourselves (and Laura!). But Charley´s friends Nicola and Gus came to alieviate our boredom on Sunday. Nicola is from Northern Ireland studying in Guatemala and Gus is Guatemalan, they´re both lovely and we ended up having a good night out in Cafe Nuit (an unusual phenomenon). Charley has taken them off for a daytrip to the Laguna today so I am going to try and get all my work done (I haven´t had a deadline since University and its taking awhile to sink in).

Thursday I travel to Leon so I will get some Semana Santa travelling in yet.

besos y abrazos
Daisy x x x

The mysterious case of the two sunflowers

2009-04-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

So I just figured out the identity of the mysterious flower-sender. I don´t want to say worse-case scenario.... but....

:)

Besitos para todos!

Daisy x x x

Yo tengo un admirador secreto...

2009-04-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Apologies for not writing anything for awhile, don't worry I haven't been abducted again! Life here is a strange mixture of very busy and incredibly lazy... Its gotten A LOT hotter, so I'm either running around incredibly sweaty trying to the millions of things I have foolishly committed myself to, or lying prostrate on the sofa unable to move in the midday sun.

Since I last wrote I have:

Hosted a dinner party for the volunteers from my school (with vegetarian Shepherds pie, muy Ingles.) -Thanks Florian!

Cooked the day's lunch for the Preschool (gallo pinto and pan from the french bakery) and taken it in on the bus. -Thanks Kathy!

Cut Albert's hair and subsequently received haircut requests from 4 or 5 others which should keep me nice and busy for the foreseeable future. (Do I hear a new career beckoning?)

Had a fairly horrific stomach bug which took me out for about 5 days...

Been on a day trip to Managua with Charley where we went straight to the Metrocentro, skated around on the shiny linoneum and basked in the abrasively strong airconditioning. We ate McDonalds and Burger King respectively and watched Coraline y la Puerta Secreta in Spanish sin subtitulos. This came to be known as THE BEST DAY EVER. Which may well strike you as revoltingly western and touristy but we don't care, it's been 2 months.... The film btw is a beautiful animation and well worth seeing. Excitingly I understood everything in Spanish!

Went to Catarina which was beautiful and very different from anywhere else I have visited here. It is one of the so called 'pueblos blancos' and famous throughout the country for selling hundreds of pot plants. Each little house is like a miniature garden centre. Tal bonito! Sam, Sophie and I climbed to the view point and paid a very reasonably 20 cords to look at the most stunning view over the languna de apollo and to Granada glimmering in the distance.

....................................

In other news, I appear to have a secret admirer. On Saturday a local guy came to the door with a red rose for 'Daisy Baldwin' which was recieved with deep sceptism on my behalf as we're used to being scammed now. However it seems it was a genuine gift which the guy was just delivering (he claimed not to know who from). It had a tag which just had the number 1 on it and an indecipherable squiggle,

Then two days later a different guy came roung with two big sunflowers with the number '2'on the tag... I can't figure it out at all as hardly anyone here knows my surname /apellido. I also wonder what number they're aiming for - I hope three's a charm as I get very impatient when I don't know things. Also, being deeply unromantic, I still think it might be some sort of trick.... Hmmm will update you ASAP when I finally unearth the truth (it is literally killing me not knowing).

Semana Santa is coming up here (Holy Week) and so we have the whole week off and I am planning on going travelling with some of my friends here, to Estelli and Matagalpa in the mountains - and thus hopefully cooler - and then to Leon.

!Nos vemos amigos!
Deysi x x x

Where were you?

2009-03-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was actually my first day back at school after 'the ordeal', what with rest and recuperation and trips to the police station in Managua. As I came in all the children yelled 'Hola hola!' and Jasmin our Profesora gave me a big hug and said how happy she was I was okay.

Then Alfredo came running towards me shouting 'Profe, Profe!' and then came to an abrupt halt in front of me, looking baleful and said in Spanish 'Where were you?? You weren't here on wednesday and thursday, and friday and monday and tuesday.' It was so sweet because they're only just learning days of the week and the fact that he'd noticed and remembered every day I was away, well it made me think how sad it will be when I really do have to leave.

A lot of people thought I would just go home after what happened, but that never crossed my mind actually. Things like that are rare and I was unlucky. In fact that morning on the bus on the way to red day, I remember I looked out of the window at the still surprising spectacle of the Mombacho volcano looming in the near-distance, and felt so happy I decided to extend my stay. I still want to do that and I will think carefully about it over the next week.

In other news, we've been having a very social time over here in Granada. I was lucky enough to be invited to Eleanor's select birthday dinner party, with delicious food and great company (I was the token young person.... kidding Eleanor!). On Wednesday it was Tiia an Robert's leaving party (neither are leaving Granada, just our house as Tiia has a job with the Finnish embassy (!) and Robert has moved into a homestay). And on Friday another volunteer Franklin, had a fantastic party in his house, with a really good atmosphere and all the Esperanza crowd. It was a really nice night and a good way of forgetting the events of some of the preceeding week. And Saturday all the volunteers from La Epifania were invited round to Donald's house, our ayudante, for a homecooked dinner with sweet coffee whilst we watched a Latin American style strictly come dancing type program. It was a real honour and very interesting, I plan on reciprocating next week so watch this space!

Oh, a funny thing, we have three new volunteers in our house (Kathy, Annie and Kirsten: Austrian, German, American, all lovely) so we wrote on our board, 'Benvenido a El Marterio', which is the name of our street and house. Then one of our Nicaraguan intercambio girls saw it and starting laughing hysterically because none of us had stopped to think that El Marterio means 'the torture, the torment or the suffering'.... :)

!Viva el Marterio!

Dia del Rojo

2009-03-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

So there's a reason I haven't written anything for awhile... Last Tuesday was Fiesta del Rojo at Prescolar, and the morning was almost painfully beautiful, a real highpoint of my time here so far. The afternoon was less so, as I was abducted and robbed! The important thing however is that I'm fine and will live to fight another day.

The red party was incredibly awesome. I wore a red sundress which is the only red thing I brought with me. Our Profe, Jasmin, looked amazing in tight red flares, a red blouse, and red hair ribbons. All the children were dressed in red and some of the little girls had what looked like old cheerleading outfits, or bridesmaids dresses from some super 70s wedding. All of their parents had really made an effort and the kids were so excited! We had bought some red balloons and blew them up and let them fly away in the wind and the children scattered over the grass like rose petals thrown up into the air. I had some very lovely pictures which I unfortunately no longer have.

I really enjoy working in Prescolar! I don't think I mentioned my boyfriend, Alfredo, who is four and on my third day helping out approached me to ask if I would be his girlfriend. He is adorable and does things like quietly brings me a chair if I'm standing up helping someone with their work, tells me my hair looks nice and gives me sporadic hugs (seriously, what more does a girl want?). This day he begged to be allowed to take a picture of my with my camera, and took a really good one of me with some of the other kids, and then as I went to take it off him, kept taking pictures until I had about five of me getting closer and closer, laughing. Its a shame I don't have the camera anymore, but Eleanor has a funny picture of him taking a picture of me with it so I can remember them both!

Towards the end of the fiesta, which included party games and a pinata, we had our red feast. Everything had to be red including the food and drink, so we had tomato rice, luminous strawberry jam on crackers and 'Rojita' which is a bright red gaseosa - fizzy drink - which I think tastes of roses but my other volunteer friends disagree. I had a plate of food, which I do every so often and haven't gotten sick yet (!) but when they offered me some rojita I declined because I didn't have a cup, and Alfredo and his mother approached and with great aplomb, gave me his own cup. It was an awkward moment as I looked into the expectant eyes of my mother-in-law-to-be, the smiling teacher holding the drink, a beaming Alfredo, and the drink itself, which was extremely dirty and had bits of god knows what floating around in it.... People, I drank it. *cue applause*

It was just after this, having waved goodbye to all the kids and their parents that I went to wait outside the school for the bus. It was coincidentally Eleanor's birthday so she had gone about fifteen minutes before and I was waiting alone, something I've done a few times before with no problems. I was probably very noticable as a very white girl with very yellow hair and a very red dress, and within a minute of saying goodbye to a little girl who asked me to help with her English, a car had stopped and a women in the back was talking to me. I didn't understand and went a little closer to the open door, at which point a man and a woman swiftly appeared from behind the large tree I had been leaning against bundled me into the car. They did a sharp u-turn and headed off towards Managua, the capital city.

I wont go into details but it wasn't a pleasant experience, and I was unlucky in that it was the one day I had anything of value on me -esp a credit card which I never take out. The camera is the only thing I felt a slight pang for and I think that was because of all the lovely pictures of red day which were on it. I also miss my bag from Masaya and my most useful trousers! Most annoying was that I had six embroidered hand puppets from the school, which were all taken.

It was very frightening but it wasn't until, two hours later, they dropped me off in a bario in Managua that it really hit me and I broke down. I was lucky enough to run into a kind woman who phoned the police and took me to a safe shop because apparently that area is extremely dangerous. The organisation I work for, La Esperanza Granada, have been wonderful, and I feel very loved by everyone here. I am pressing charges and will keep you posted on the mysterious criminal justice system here.

There's so much more I could say about what has come to be known over here as 'the ordeal', but I don't want to waste any more time thinking about it. It was bad but its over and I'm okay, I still have my health :)

Love from far-away
Deysi Estrella xxxxxx

Mira, Profe, Mira!!!!

2009-02-25T11:06:00.000-08:00

Hola amigos!
Im still struggling with my Spanish, most of what I thought was a tan came off in the shower this morning and I just opened my bag and about 30 huge ant like creatures ran out (!) but Im still having an amazing time here, it really feels like home... Leon was an interesting change but Im pleased to be back in Granada. (After the ant thing I am now sitting in the internet cafe nervously twitching and flicking imaginary insects of myself which is engendering strange looks from fellow customers, but never mind!)

Since I last wrote, I have switched from secundo grado to prescolar, which is quite a big change. They've never had any volunteer help with the preschool until Eleanor, a volunteer from the UK who is a primary teacher back home, came over and they decided it was the best way to utilise her skills. But there are over 50 under 5 year olds and so she requested I transfer to help her out. Although I feel like Ive really bonded with my kids in the second grade, I am good with very small children and they obviously needed help, so I agreed to the swap, even though it means getting into school before 8! Haha having just written that I realise its really not that early, it just seems that way because its before everyone else and change from my previous routine. Its actually a nice schedule because we finish at 12 at the latest so I have all my afternoons free if I want and can take a siesta. ....I would be doing that now but I have locked myself out and whilst the key might be somewhere in the bottom of my bag, I am too afraid to open it again... ! Ah Nicaraguan life.

My first few days of prescolar have been great, I actually prefer the earlier starts and surprisingly I find myself speaking more Spanish because Im with the kids constantly and I have no embarrasment in front of them (you really cant have any pride with preschoolers or you never get anywhere with them). Also I think maybe because they only just learnt the rules themselves, they are much more likely to pick up on my Spanish mistakes and politely correct me than the older kids. This could also be a respect thing as the older children tend to always defer to you even when you are blatantly using the wrong tense, plus they of course understand that Im foreign and let it go, whereas these little things just know its wrong and are not afraid to call me on it!

Eleanor is lovely and a great resource because she obviously has a lot of experience, but at the same time I feel like I am still being useful. For example I found out on the first day that Eleanor had been politely waiting for the teacher to invite her to start the planned activities, because of course in England it would be considered incredibly rude to just barge in and take over. But its a very different set up here, and I think they consider the volunteers to have just as much right to be here as them, which is great. So I went and asked her if we could begin, which she was more than happy with.. hopefully this was helpful in improving transcultural commication!

Next week we are having a Red Party to focus on el color rojo and the teacher says I have to wear my red dress. Its all jolly exciting. My homework for the weekend is to write a story featuring 6 animal puppets which she has lent me in order to read and act it out to the children on Lunes. Suprisingly we have tomorrow and friday off because for some unknown reason there is no school. So much of what goes on at school, particularly regarding the time table is utterly unfathomable to us all, even the fluent Spanish speakers. Volunteers may come and go but the old beast that is La Epifania rumbles on regardless, largely going its own sweet way.

So now that we have a 4 day weekend I feel I really ought to go travelling somewhere, but I have no plans at the moment...

I am now going to really quickly reach into my bag for my purse, grab some money, pay and walk home in the hopes that one of my lovely housemates has returned home and will let me in. Wish me luck!

Daisy x x x

¡Feliz cumpleano Deysi!

2009-02-20T16:08:00.000-08:00

¡Feliz cumpleano! is Nicaraguense for Happy birthday as they always drop their ssss here, to the point where they often dont even spell the word with an S on the end. Im sure the accent Im steadily acquiring will sound very cool when I go to Spain!

Yesterday was my birthday (no numbers as I believe after 21 you´re supposed to lie about your age). It was a very lovely day thanks to all the people over here who are really sweet. Because Daisy en espanol is Margarita, I hosted a margarita party with margarita cocktails and pizza. Its so easy to organise something like a birthday party here because we all live relatively close together and see each other all the time so there was none of the usual planning stress I associate with birthdays back home.

The other volunteers had made me two beautiful cards (besitos Mariel!) and a crown with daisies on! Tiia and Riley made me a fruitloops necklace (as per request, I forget why...) with a shell from Mexico on the end so that I can wear it after I eat the fruit loops off. Very thoughtful!

Franklin, a local guy who sells woven bracelets and necklaces let me choose whatever I wanted from his stall as a present (I picked a purple zigzaggy bracelet) and then Rolofe, Janina and Other Franklin bought me a cute gift basket with a painted wooden toucan and a selection of sweets, yum yum. Robert got me a pinata of Dora the Explorer, which I had to beat to death with a metal pole, (disturbing video to follow). Toby gave me a book, which was very appreciated as I have read everything English in the house, including an unoficial biography of Cocaine. Florian and Marike and Paul brought much needed tequila and Marike wrapped hers in dried leaves with birthday messages painted on.

It felt like a very exotic birthday and a nice day to share with everyone here who Im really grateful to have gotten to know over the last month or so.

Im writing this from Leon in the hostel by the pool, whilst being beyond exhausted because Tiia Florian Yacoba and I stayed up talking till dawn, which was a lot of fun but meant the journey to Leon by microbus today was pretty dire! We had Friday off because of a school meeting so Tighe, Sophie, Albert, Tiia, Yacoba Mariel and I came to Leon for a long weekend. The hostel is great and what Ive seen of Leon through bleary eyes is muy bonita.

My Spanish is slowly improving and today Albert, from Barcelona who doesnt speak much English, agreed to an Intercambio with me every other day which will be really useful I think, especially as he speaks Spain Spanish and not Nica! Also our cool new housemate Sam also from England and studying Spanish and Portuguese says he will help teach me - the more help the better I say! I had a very rapid and probably nonsensical conversation with poor Sam this morning when he arrived and I was fresh from my one hours sleep. In this time he has endeared himself to me greatly by lending me his book of Reuben Dario poetry so that I can get the true Leon experience, and as he bizarrely happens to live in Thames Ditton where I was offered an internship when I return, he offered me his room whilst he´s travelling. What a great new addition to the casa I say :)

Now I really really need to sleep, love to all friends and family, thank you for the birthday wishes ¡Besos! Margarita x x x

RIP gattitos

2009-02-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

Sadly the kittens subsequently died, but I was very impressed by Charley, Laura and Mariels hard work feeding them through the night, its very sad. We have burried them in the garden and written their (very inventive) names on the wall above.

Spanish class is going very well, its a lot of information to take in all at once but along with having to talk to the kids, the teacher and the ayudante, its sort of a sink or swim moment and I think Im just about treading water.

Ive been a bit ill with a nasty cough and so have visited the doctor here for the first and probably not the last time. He was very friendly and prescribed antibiotics so no Flor de Cana for me for a week (!). This meant I missed a Spanish lesson as I had to go after the mornings teaching and had no way of contacting Maria. She was a little put out I think so today I took her some brioche from the French bakery which I was talking about in class. Donald the ayudante gave me un regalo of a mango today so I gave her that also (being sadly allergic to them).

Work with the children was a little overwhelming at first. Some of them dont know the alphabet and cant read and the prospect of teaching them to overcome those major problems when the teacher hasnt managed, we only have 25 minutes a day and I dont speak Spanish well, is a little daunting. The teacher has also been a little frosty thus far (Florian thinks she hates us, I think shes a reserved type..) But yesterday I decided we should approach her and ask exactly what she is trying to teach the children, because we are surely supposed to suplement her teaching not replace it. This seemed to get on her good side as well as being very useful as a teaching guide. Today she asked me for help with her English homework, I hope I got it right, it was really hard!

At the moment we are studying capitals, the alphabet, antonyms and syllables. One of the so called problem kids continues to be a dream to teach, he gives me hugs and pictures and knows the alphabet perfectly - I might ask for clarification from the ayudante as to why he needs extra help, although I would miss him! With the other I think I have had a mini breakthrough and although he doesnt know the alphabet at all, today we worked on drawing letters and I think he came to understand and recognise about 4 which is better than nothing! He was really engaged and excited and kept focus throughout. I wrote in his book that I was very happy with him which seemed to impress him, although he still ran into another classroom on his way back to stick his tongue out at his older friends! Hes an original cheeky monkey. Florian and I had to pick a few kids to take out for the reading group, and all the kids were clamouring to be chosen and he just winked at me in an attempt to get me to pick him (I did not!). The girl also was much better behaved and interracted well with me. Today she held my hand in both of hers at the end of reading group, which is a local way that children show respect to special adults, according to my guidebook!

Apologies if these blogs are overly wordy, my parents are helping to fund this little venture and demand regular and detailed updates!

Adios chicos! Hope everyone is well over in snowy England and sunny Texas.
xxxx

First day of school

2009-02-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

Wow im being very good at keeping up this blog recently, bouyed on by the fact that some people have let me know they are reading it, which is nice of them!

Today was my first teaching day where I had to have uno a unos con los ninos. (Thats your lot of Spanish for the day, I dont want to show off..) For some reason I wasnt really nervous.. I think because I used to mentor teenagers in England with behavioural problems, I figured I could handle a moody 7 year old even in a foreign language. Turns out I was right, fortunately!

Before starting, Florian and I decided which kids we would each work with. We had been warned by the ayudante, the teacher, and Yacoba (who taught during summer school) that there were two problem kids, both boys, who would be very difficult to handle. Coincidentally I ended up with both of them! I decided Id see how it went but sometimes boys respond better to male teachers and if that was the case I hoped we could swap.

The first kid was one of those we had been warned about and I admit to being a little worried as we made our way out into the grass and I began to explain that I didnt really speak Spanish but perhaps he could help me? I hadnt really thought about what I would do with them beyond general introductions, and we had 25 minutes to fill!

So I started off with a few questions about him and his family, and got him to draw his house with his brothers and sister in it. After this basic stuff we worked on syllables, which is what they were studying in class today. I wrote out some of the words they had to work on for homework (libro, blanco) plus some scant others drawn from my poor Spanish (arbol, helado, escuela) and we clapped out the syllables. Alexis was really good at it, very well behaved, attentive and intelligent. I dont really understant why we were warned about him, unless perhaps he just responds best when all the attention is on him? He politely corrected my grammar and got very excited when I said he could pick some words for me to try. Then we read a book about a kangaroo (cangaro) and he came and sat on my knee. Very sweet and a pleasant surprise.

I only saw two more children, Jessica, who was a little bored I think mostly because she really cant read well at all which we re going to have to work on. The third, Michael did indeed live up to the warning we had been given, but nothing I couldnt handle ;) For his first trick I went into the classroom to get him and asked if he was Michael and he gave me an angelic smile and pointed out another kid as Michael. I blithely went to get this boy and la profesora just looked at me like - you idiot I cant believe you fell for that one- ho hum. For the first ten minutes he refused to do anything but I just said okay and did it myself and eventually he joined in. He liked clapping the syllables and was good at that, but he cant read at all. Its important to remember each childs strengths and weaknessess so I can structure the lessons because I think it would help if we started with something they felt confident with before moving on to spend time on reading and writing which they definately need.

Well that was probably very dull for anyone but me, sorry! Straight after school I ran off to my Spanish class (everyone at my house is very impressed by my decision to take 3 solid hours of one-on-one ). It was incredibly useful and my teacher, Maria is really helpful and interesting. We did a lot of work on verbs and talked a lot about university in England and Nicaragua. I explained that in England we get student loans and she wanted to know what happened if students left the country to avoid paying them back (perhaps she thinks this is what Im doing..?). I used the verbs I had learned to say -they can run but they cant hide - which sent her into hysterics.

Then I went to the french bakery across the road where I had my first sweet food since I got here and a strong coffee whilst I did my homework. The girl in the bakery is very nice and gave me some sweet bread gratis and says she will help me with my Spanish.

In other news one of the girls has brought a box full of day old kittens into the house. Tensions are running slightly high as I amongst others question the practicality of trying to keep them alive when they will need constant care and we all have work as well as the fact none of us will stay here more than a couple of months. Its difficult because they are very cute. For the moment at least theyre staying with us and we have named them Reuben Dario, Salvadore Dali and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Best case scenario would be to find a family or two which would be willing to take them in. Will keep you posted amigos xxxxx

Rest & Relaxation

2009-02-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

It hasn´t been as busy here as I thought it would be after term started, mainly because this last week the kids have all been going home early at 11 and we´ve just been getting our bearings trying to figure out how we´re going to handle everything.

My school is called La Epifania, and there´s six of us who work there; Yacoba, Janina, Florian, Anais and Tighe. (US, Holland, Germany, France and Canada respectively). Our ayudante is Donald who is a very cool character and recently gave himself a chin piercing (!).

Some people are a little frustrated that we haven´t started working with the children yet but I figure if the school isn´t ready it would be silly to rush in and we have been involved in prepping the classrooms and library, moving bookshelves and sacks of maize and making a big colorful mural on the wall.

On thursday we went into the local community to introduce ourselves as we will be holding reading groups there twice a week. This, as well as a once weekly supervised trip to the dentist for some of the children and arts and sports classes, is how we will spend the afternoons once school is out (at noon).

I have managed to get a cold despite the blazing heat (I blame Riley) so I actually stayed home on Friday morning. Fortunately we wont start school proper until next week so I didn´t miss too much. I hung out with Max, our new housemate from the US, and Jerome, an old volunteer who was visiting for a week before going back to France. In the afternoon Jerome took Mariel and I to visit his ´secret place´ by the lake where you can swim in peace.

It was beautiful and the water was really warm but Mariel and I didn´t realise we were going to swim and hadm´t brought stuff with us. Luckily we met up with some local Nica guys who promptly lent us their t-shirts to swim in. It was a really tranquil lazy afternoon and the first time I´ve been swimming since I got here.

When we got back I managed to swiftly change and join Tiia and Laura for a yoga class at the gym. It was the perfect way to end the day, with about 12 of us in a warm airy room lit by candles and joined intermitently by the resident cats, one of whom looked just like mine at home. It really helped my cough somehow and we left in a very zen like mood.

That night everyone came round to our house (la casa de fiestas) and we played a long and dangerous game of ´spoons´. Its a very good job the game isn´t called knives is all I can say...

After all this excitement we then had a housewarming party on Saturday at the nueva casa, which doubled up as a goodbye to Marliees & Stine (sp?) and Jerome. M & S bought a 2 litre bottle of Flor de Cana (the delicious local rum) and Franklin stepped in as Riley Tighe and I attempted ineptly to open a coconut and expertly poured us all coconut juice. Yummy.

In other news I just booked myself in for intensive 3 hour Spanish lessons at a local school, where we get a discount for being voluntarios, so expect a sharp increase in Spanish language parts of this blog...

¡Hasta pronto! Margarita xxxx

London Underground v. Nica buses

2009-02-02T15:30:00.000-08:00

I just had to add this afterthought, or musing if you will, on my experience of public transport in Nicaragua on they way to Rivas. Mostly they drive ex-American yellow school buses crammed to the rafters with people and bags and with a strange assortment of items tied to the roof (such as rocking chairs and bikes).

I luckily got a seat and was next to a Nica woman with a little baby. After sizing me up she began to talk rapidly in Spanish and despite my explaining I couldnt understand her very well, she kept up a constant dialogue all the way there. And she kept asking -¿Donde es su madre? - to the guys amusement. She asked if Nick or Riley was my novio and when I said no she went back to asking where my Mama was. I think this was the concerned Nicaraguan equivalent of the ABBA song, does your Mother know that youre out?

As well as chatting to me, she also kept giving me food which all the people at my end of the bus were sharing although they werent together. She would take an orange or banana and insist I ate one too. I thanked her and couldnt help think how different it was to my commute to work on the London Underground. Although we were crammed in in much the same way if anyone turned to someone on the tube and offered them some fruit I really think someone might phone the anti-terrorist suspicion hotline.

This little moment is very indicative of how I find most of the people here. Theyre generally very friendly, proud of their country, and generous with what little they have.

Land of lakes and mountains

2009-02-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

I have just got back from my trip to the island of Omatepe before school term starts. I have electric sunburn (I dont think this is an expression but it should be one because thats what it looks and feels like) very battered and bleeding feet and the end of a sunstroke headache but it was all worth it!

I set off on Friday with fellow volunteers Riley and Nick, American guys both coincidentally from Minesota. Initially the trip seemed doomed to failure as our ringleader Tiia had an ultra-exciting job interview with the Finnish Embassy today in the capital city, Managua. We all agreed that it was probably better for her to relax and go through her notes rather than rush back and forth on what is a fairly long journey. But at 7.30 in the morning our resolve was tested -Nick was hungover and Riley has what Im fairly sure is the beginnings of TB or at least a nasty cough. In the end we all decided we had to make the most of some free time and agreed to reconvene at 11.30.

We slightly understimated both the length of the journey and the size of the island but were actually very lucky with how things turned out, catching the last bus to our hostel as it got dark. By the time we arrived in Balgues, a little town on the smaller part of the island, it was pitch dark and we followed a sign up a rambly road which claimed 1km to the hostel (I have now travelled this path several times and doubt the veracity of this measurment).

Fortunately Riley must have been a boyscout and had brought along a torch so we could just about see where we were going. At one point it illuminated a GIANT toad which was the size of a rabbit. Riley concluded the island was over run with such creatures but we never saw another one. Half way up the long dark path we bumped into a fellow traveller from Brighton who had missed his stop, seen it was getting dark and decided to follow us. We must look very approachable. We spent the next few days hanging out with Olly which is the best part of travelling I think -meeting all sorts of different people on the way.

The hostel -Finca Magdalena- finally appeared like an oasis out of the shadows and was muy linda - a big old white gable farm house with a lush colourful garden and panoramic views of both volcanos - Concepcion looming opposite and Maderas acting as a stunning backdrop behind. It was also ridiculously cheap, with most meals costing 40 cordobas (2 dollars). I found out you could stay for free if you volunteered for a month and it was very hard to leave!

Our first day the men decided to climb the volcano whilst I opted for an easy petroglyph walk nearby. They had all agreed to pretend I actually climbed Maderas but I guess Im a bad liar. I took a wrong turning on my walk and ended up going for a hike through the banana groves, along the island and down to the lakeshore where local women were washing their clothes in the river.

When I finally got back (this was beginnings of the crippled feet) I sat on the porch under the eaves and read -Howl, a critical companion. Someone had left it on the table and it was the exact same title I got out of the Oxford Bod library for my American Lit paper and naturally never read. I finished it that evening and remembered both how good the poem is and how hideous Oxford was at times! I have to say Im relieved to have finished and be able to sit down and enjoy reading again...

Later that day a French volunteer who started when I did, Anais, came unexpectedly to join us. Anais is supercool, she hitchiked halfway there with a Rasta Nica who made a little detour to buy weed, and then walked the rest of the way (no mean feat!). She also bought a bottle of Flor de Cana - the famous Nicaraguan rum and impresses us all by drinking it straight through a straw and remarking coolly that it wasnt as strong as the rum they have in France!

It was a fun night and the next day we all went up to Totoco, the ecolodge Elinas friends are setting up. We passed Martiin on the way out which was a shame but we had a great visit. Patricia from Spain showed us round the breathtakingly beautiful land with two finished lodges which will ultimately cost hundreds of dollars a night. As the first paying guests had gone on a tour of the island, we got to look around and we pretended we owned the place. Lying on the hammock looking lazily out at the great Concepcion volcano swathed in tropical cloudforest was an amazing experience. We then had a beer with Patricia (and a cute French Canadian voluteer!) before dropping Anais of at the lodge she was moving on to whilst we attempted to walk along the coast to Santa Domingo, the nearest beach.

Unfortunately the lake water was so high there wasnt really a beach when we finally arrived (one sudden downpour and a lot of walking later). But we went for a quick swim in a deserted part of the lake which was really fun. Its so strange swimming in fresh water and watching animals drinking from the waves!

It was dark when we walked back (with my torch this time) and we provided a source of much amusement for the locals, who all seemed to be out in force singing and dancing in churches and cafes along the route back. I think in part it was because we are all very gringo looking - all very white with blonde hair etc.

I loved Omatepe and will definately go back and do some of the things we didnt have time for. After a sketchy start we had a really fun group and I learnt a lot of American expressions, and some Spanish from the guys.

The beauty of the place will come accross more fully in pictures which I faithfully promise to add next time I come to the internet cafe but for now adios amigos, Daisy xxxxx

En la escuela

2009-01-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

And now to convince you I havent spent all my time here lazing in the sun (I am still blanco blanco blanco).

Firstly my first couple of days were nice as the people who were leaving had all planned little get-togethers and goodbye activities which served as introductions for me luckily. We all went to a little French place for gorgeous vegetarian lasagna on Saturday which was my first introduction to Nicaraguan food and whilst not local it was delicious, which has proved true ever since.

Then on Sunday we all climbed the spiraling steps of the church like good tourists and watched the sun set over the Cathedral, with the island of Omatepe shimmering in the distance and the sun sinking behind the red roofs of the houses. ¡Que linda!

On Monday I had my orientation at the office where I met other new volunteers and we were taken on a tour of the schools which La Esperanza helps out at. I got asigned to La Epifania along with a Canadian and French girl and it looked like one of the bigger ones, Im really looking forward to starting there. We met Donald, the school Ayudante (Helper) who is a local student the charity sponsers through University on the proviso that they come and help at the schools during the week and study on weekends (this is what happens in Nicaragua as no one could afford to study in the week and work weekends like we usually do).

That afternoon, another volunteer (Yacoba) and I went out and held a reading group with some kids. It was really fun, all the kids were so excited and the put a blanket on the floor and argued over who got which book. A lot of the kids stroked my hair and asked questions about it. Recalling some highschool Spanish I said triumphantly -¡es rubio! and this girl shook her head solemly and said - no es amarillo. They were all very interested in the pretty silver necklace Brandi and Peter bought me back from Hawaii and when I said it was un regalo, they all chorused -¡un novio! ¡un novio! and I had to dissapoint them. This has now happened several times as the little girls find novios very exciting and so from now on I intend to say yes, (hope thats okay Peter!)

Then on Tuesday I went with some of the other volunteers to their school for the last day of the so called -summer school.... It was a great experience. I was working with the very small children so pretty much all I did was help them play games donated by the charity and try to coax some of the very shy ones to speak to me. One of the volunteers brought some balloons which caused high excitement, and I found a felt pen and drew faces and flowers on them. This went down very well, although a lot of them then licked it off so they could get another picture, which meant several went home with blue mouths... Oh well...

At lunch we ate gallo pinto with the children (rice and red beans, a staple dish here). No one had told us newcomers to bring a plate and the children all share plastic dishes which we were told could be dangerous to eat from. We decided to wash the plates with water we had brought, but a lovely girl Alejandra who I met on the (longish, hot) walk there, came over and shyly offered me her own plate she had brought from home and cleaned for me. It was very sweet.

The volunteers who were leaving (I cant spell their names but they will be missed!) had bought 70 balls for each of the kids, which caused outright chaos as they all hollered and scrambled to get first in line! Then we began the long walk back, accompanied for a bit by Alejandra, her younger sister and friend. Tiia (my new Finnish amiga) and I stopped at her house for a bit and Tiia taught them to play a ball game against the wall. I gave the girls mine and Tiias sunglasses to try on and took a cute picture which I will upload asap.

Then we hitchhiked part of the way home in the back of a truck but ended up having to pay for the bus anyway as the driver turned off just outside Granada.

Well thats more than enough for now. We have some free time now as theres a break before term starts on Wednesday, so Tiia and I are going to Omatepe on Friday and hopefully we will visit friends of Elina -a friend from my internshipt at Momentum and the person who initially recommended Nica to me- who are trying to set up an eco lodge there!

Love, Daisy xxxx

Vivo en Granada

2009-01-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

I cant believe Ive only been in Nicaragua since Saturday, it already feels like Ive been here for weeks (in a good settled in way rather than O God when can I leave..)

I am writing this in a breezy internet cafe just off the parque central. It is a proper internet cafe where you can actually order coffee, which I have just done - Quiero un cafe con leche ;)
I have the day off because everyone else has taken the kids to the zoo which they are extremely excited about (the kids mostly but the voluntarios also).

So to update you, I managed to get here successfully and was duly picked up from the airport by Felipe who swiftly realised my Spanish is awful and took to saying consolingly in pidgin Spanish - three months is a long time, you will learn - to which I would say ¡Espero! and he would pretend to be impressed that I could say something. Fun times.

The house Im staying in is really fun. It is very central and colourful with bright murals all over the walls and holes in the roof where cats on heat apparently occasionall fall through the ceiling tiles. This adds an interesting element to going to sleep every night as I fervently pray a cat doesnt land on my face and disfigure me for my remaining time here. Its actually very nice though and sociable with a little outside patio, living room with a massive tv and a good kitchen. Amusingly the TV is much better here than at home, with a steady stream of Gossip Girls, Desperate Houswives and Friends beamed daily into our little room (subtitled in Spanish so we can pretend to be studying) whilst we lie sprawled on sofas or perched on the excercise ball (so we can pretend to be exercising).

The other housemates and volunteers elsewhere are all very nice and from all sorts of interesting places themselves - America, Scotland, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Finland and England are just some so far. This week a few people have left though and this weekend 10 new people are due to arrive, which is exciting.

As for Granada itself, it is extremely, breathtakingly beautiful, and completely different from anywhere I have ever been before. The post colonial grandeur of some of the old buildings and the cathedral are impressive, but what I didnt expect was all the normal streets are really charming too, and I still get excited when I glimpse the big volacano looming in the near distance at the end of the calle!

More on the school work next post. Missing everyone at home (and Texas) and sending my love!

Southern hospitality

2009-01-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

Well Mr and Mrs Scully are back from their honeymoon tomorrow and I'm almost done here in Houston! The last week or so has gone by really fast. Everyone's been incredibly sweet at looking out for me whilst I've been home alone (kind of like Macaulay Culkin but with access to free coffee and Spanish television).

Brandi's grandparents have adopted me and took me to the grocery store and bought me loads of food - apparently they do this for Brandi and Brandon all the time. All I can say is they're very lucky to have them.. they even made me little cups of soup to defrost!

On Thursday I made dinner with the medics, who all had a slightly busier schedule than me and all seem to be planning impending marriage to others within the healthcare profession, after which I assume they'll raise very healthy well-medicated families.

Then on Saturday I went to my very first basketball game with the Houston Rockets versus Miami Heat. It was the most American thing EVER it was amazing. Its at times like this when you realise that although we speak the same language, there's an awful lot we don't have in common: There were cheerleaders in little sparkly red bikinis with cowboy boots, a t-shirt toss, a kissing camera and a genuine baby race during the 'time outs'.

I'm very sold on the basketball front, its fast-paced and the rules are even comprehensible to me. The players were obviously very talented, they looked more like dancers at some points, with the ball hurtling between these giant figures almost too fast to see. I had a hotdog and a soda and subsequently was quite sick but it was totally worth it.

Then last night Becky and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. It was really fun - the film didn't live up to the hype for me but I'm glad to have seen it and I think I was the only one in the audience who understood all the Eastenders talk. We also went to a yummy Thai restaurant where Becky attempted to practice her Thai-speaking skills on an unfortunately Vietnamese waitress. She was in Thailand last year and was giving me lots of useful teaching English tips.

Suddenly Nicaragua is only a few days away and I'm really excited, but a little nervous too. Watch this space...

Daisy catches the bouquet! Now she's off to marry a Nicaraguan!

2009-01-12T15:52:00.000-08:00

So I'm currently staying in Brandi's apartment in Houston (Texas!) and typing this on the biggest computer screen I have ever seen - thanks Brandi!

Last night I helped Brandi and Peter pack for their honeymoon after they took me out for dinner. Now I'm not well versed in wedding etiquette but I'm pretty sure its a no-no to accompany the newlyweds on their first meal out together.. They did insist though and I was able to help out with some stuff afterwards which was good. We went back to the chapel and packed up the chairs, cleared away the flower petals and such. It was incredibly peaceful in there and although we probably should have sorted it so they didn't have to be cleaning up the day after the wedding it was actually sort of magical seeing everything all quiet and empty after the big day.
They're both very kind and I hope they have the most amazing and relaxing time in Hawaii, they certainly deserve it!

The wedding itself was every bit as spectacular as I had envisaged. Every little detail had been thought of. Since I arrived on Wednesday I have been to a Batchelorette party (English scones and 'teatinis' with the girls), a bridesmaid luncheon which I was invited to as an honorary bridesmaid (the best kind as there is no fear of tripping in the aisle and you still get a gift - in my case a signed copy of a book on Central America by the best man's father), a rehearsal dinner (which was so much fun!) and of course the wedding itself where Rob and I were given the job of doormen, letting in the bridesmaids, flowergirl and ring bearer, and of course the bride herself. Very important task dontchaknow ;)

Then came the reception where Brandi and Peter had their first dance and broke out into an extremely impressive choreographed lindy hop! I found out later they had been practicing for two hours a week for four months! I should have known Brandi wouldn't have settled for shuffling around in the normal uncoordinated fashion!

Then of course came the throwing of the bouquet (something I only know about from the film Clueless). Those who know me (especially those who were unlucky enough to ever be on a netball team with me) will attest to the fact that I have never caught anything in my life and yet, as if propelled by some mysterious force, the bouquet landed in my hands. It was hilarious because I'm sure you're supposed to be fashionably disinterested in the whole thing but in fact I was so triumphant that I finally caught anything that I danced around with the flower girl in glee! The flower girl btw, along with her little brother the ring bearer, is unquestionably the sweetest thing I have ever seen! Before the bouquet throwing she came and told me that if she caught it she was going to give it to me so I guess I was a shoo-in really.

So the title is taken from one of the bridesmaid's descriptions of a picture of it all and what can I say, I'm game if Central America is!