Archive for the ‘nostalgia’ Category

Posted on December 22, 2009 - by MG

Carols and Christmas snow

Yes indeed, Christmas begun in earnest for me last night with the annual Physics Department Carol service about which I have previously blogged. The music included one of my favourites, Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium, and the Coventry Carol, which the sopranos sat out on, deferring the top part to the altos.

During the mince pie and wine party afterwards I managed to possibly find a new trumpet teacher for Little Daughter (whose previous teacher Rob Stevens of the local jazz outfit The Mad Hatters, sadly and unexpectedly died recently). And to discover why the writer and presenter of the brilliant BBC TV series The History Of Christianity looked so familiar…turns out that he too has sung in the choir for years! My pal Becs and I had a nice chat with Diarmaid McCulloch about the show, which if you haven’t watched it and you have an interest in history, watch it now on iplayer! Or wait for the BBC2 rerun.

Apparently Diarmaid’s book on Christianity has sold as many copies as ICE SHOCK! Wow! And that’s hardback at £35, thank-you-very-much, unlike my books’ bargain price entertainment of £6.99.

I emerged into snow, for the first time in 20 years. Like in Dickens! A quick change at home into suitably elegant attire and down to St Hilda’s College for our IT company’s Christmas party. A really lovely evening, and nice to see the boys in black tie. Especially our co-founder Mark who only owns one suit!

Charlie from Inlight and I chatted over the merits of various Disney rides. I mentioned to him that I wrote the first ever review of Space Mountain in Disneyland Paris.

I may have had some wine. I can’t exactly remember…

Posted on February 2, 2009 - by MG

‘Invisible City’ shortlisted for Leeds Children’s Book Award

Hurray for being shortlisted for a book award! Very exciting. Now those schoolchildren in Leeds have to read all the shortlisted books and do thinks and do discussion and do presentation skills and learning stuff like that. Mmm, good stuff, all very educational. As Benicio would say – Excelente. Actually he’d more likely say chiiiido. (‘chido’ means ‘cool’ in Mexican slang, and isn’t even rude!)

It also means that I get to go to the ceremony and either practise my ‘Not disappointed I didn’t win really because JOLLY GOOD SHOW etc’ face. Or my modest ‘Me?…who me?…really?’ face.

Or more likely not practice anything at all, not even a speech, because I will be so busy writing Joshua 4.

I’ve been to the Nibbies (British Book Awards), I’ve seen it done. The rule of four: thank your husband/wife, your agent, your editor and your publisher. Big smile, move on. Or seethe, glassy-eyed from the losers’ table.

Eee. I’ve never been to Leeds. Hear it’s right sophisticated. The incomparably hip John Shuttleworth says so.

I am NOT ashamed to ask for your help, blog readers. If you are a young person from Leeds, please:

1. Read Invisible City (ah, go on, go on, go on, go on.)
2. Write a stonking review of it on the Leeds Book Award Website
3. Convince a teacher or school librarian to take your class there.
4. On the way to the ceremony, persuade all your classmates to vote JOSHUA.

Another tip from a fangirl is this: write the name of your favourite book on the blackboard every day until your school chums get fed up with you. I did this every week to remind people to watch Blake’s 7, when I were a lass.

Did you know, when I was young we had only THREE TV channels. No video recorders – if you missed your show that was it, you could only tear out your hair and weep. No computers, no handheld video games, no Internet, no mobile phones, no txting. It was the Dark Ages, man, don’t let your parents tell you anything different! On the bright side we had Texan Bars, Pink Panther bars and Banjos.

Posted on November 28, 2008 - by MG

A visit to the ol’ lab…

I dropped in on my former DPhil supervisor, Nick Proudfoot at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology yesterday. I don’t visit that much, even though we’re good friends now. The lab is a busy place, after all. You shouldn’t delay the progress of science.

I was there to take a photo of some lab equipment for the ARG we’re developing. Yes – there’s a clue. Part of the game will feature a virtual lab facility, where DNA experiments can be ordered over the Web and the results sent by email. It’s all part of the story…

Nick and I chatted – as we always do on these occasions – about recent progress in the field. Or not-so-recent progress, since I actually left molecular biology in 1992 and went into cell biology (the former is mainly about genes, the latter is mainly about proteins and cells). So my knowledge is fairly vague and out of date as it is…

Anyway, OMG! So may cool new techniques have been invented since I left! Eeee, kids today, they dun’t know how easy they’ve got it…in my day you really had to suffer for your science, with home-made apparatus and enzymes and techniques that barely worked…

The march of progress. And yet molecular biology labs are still fairly grungy, messy places to be. As the photo above proves!

Meanwhile, I also took a shot of my thesis, which is on a shelf in Nick’s office along with those of all the other students he’s shepherded through the process of becoming Dr. Scientist. Well done Nick! You’re a STAR. (Really – publishing eight scientific papers this year, in great journals too…)

(and so nice to see my first  ‘book’ in the company of those by my brother-in-law Paul and my good friend Becs!)

And spot the girl in the nerdy jumper, my official department photo from 1991 now displayed in one of the corridors of the labs.

Roll on the NJP Lab Reunion dinner in December!

(Photo above shows me, Alex Moreira, Joan Monks and Nick.)

Posted on October 20, 2008 - by MG

It’s all about me

My good pal Sarah tagged me. This is how it works: Display the award. Link back to the person who gave you this award. Nominate at least 7 other blogs. Put links to those blogs on your blog. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you’ve nominated. You can only answer in one word.
1. Where is your cell phone? Bedside.
2. Where is your significant other? Downstairs.
3. Your hair color? Brown.
4. Your mother? Dead.
5. Your father? Dead.
6. Your favourite thing? Stories.
7. Your dream last night? Weird.
8. Your dream/goal? Achieved.
9. The room you’re in? Bedroom.
10. Your hobby? Salsa.
11. Your fear? Illness.
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Here.
13. Where were you last night? Singapore.
14. What you’re not? Athletic.
15. One of your wish-list items? Office.
16. Where you grew up? Manchester.
17. The last thing you did? Slept.
18. What are you wearing? PJs.
19. Your TV? Old.
20. Your pet? Rattish.
21. Your computer? Red.
22. Your mood? Eager.
23. Missing someone? Always.
24. Your car? Beetle.
25. Something you’re not wearing? Underwear.
26. Favourite store? Borders.
27. Your summer? Productive.
28. Love someone? Madly.
29. Your favorite color? Red.
30. When is the last time you laughed? Now.
31. Last time you cried? Ages.

I tag MaryD, Susie, Frank, Moanie Miss Groanie, Rich, Solvey and Esruel. But you don’t have to play. There’s no gypsy curse, if that’s what you’re thinking.

Posted on September 22, 2008 - by MG

Advice to aspiring novelists…writers write!

I was looking through a copy of the author information pack, which Scholastic made for my school and library visits. (We’re planning a couple of school visits when I’m in Perth, Western Australia three weeks from now.)

To my surprise I noticed that apparently this Website contains advice to writers. Hmm…well once in a while maybe. Mainly I direct serious aspiring authors to join an online community for more in-depth info and support.

But I thought I’d make a bit of an effort just for once. Over on the Writers And Artists Yearbook website is a regular feature called ‘Inside Publishing’. There are monthly interviews with famous novelists. That old chestnut comes up in most interviews: What advice would you give to aspiring novelists?

I compiled some replies:

Kate Mosse
“To write! Five minutes of writing a day is better than no minutes. Too many new writers think that unless they have plenty of time, it’s not worth booting up the computer or sharpening that pencil. But think of it, instead, like practising scales on the piano before tackling that Beethoven Concerto or like warming-up in the gym – the more you prepare for writing, the better shape you’ll be in once you have time to really concentrate. ”

Justine Picardie
“Write about the thing that really obsesses you — you need to feel possessed to get through the long, hard journey of writing a book. And don’t give up when it gets hard in the middle. The middle always feels impossible, as if you’ll never finish.”

Alexander McCall-Smith
“I think that many novelists at the beginning of their careers spend far too much time writing and then tinkering with their first book. My advice is to write a book and then immediately go on to the next one and to the one after that. In other words, the more you write, the better you will become.”

Maeve Binchy
“Seriously, it’s very boring, but you must write at least 10 pages a week otherwise you’re not writing, you’re only playing around. I got very good advice early on about having a plan, writing a sort of scaffolding out of your 15 chapters – and writing the last line of each chapter in now. That’s meant to stop you rambling on and on and gets some pace into the book.”

Iain Rankin
“Have have faith in your abilities, and the confidence that you have a story worth telling. But be open to advice and criticism. You need perseverence and a thick skin, and you also need a measure of luck. I’d been getting published for over 10 years before I ‘made it’.”

All terrific advice. As for me I’m still working on it. I tell children who ask this that they should read widely, with equal respect for literature and commercial novels, comics etc. (Unless you respect the genre you can never hope to write in it).

To that I think I’d add the basic advice to just write. Write stories if you’re ready. If you aren’t ready to invent stuff, don’t worry that will come. Write letters instead, or emails, or keep a blog. Your ordinary life is a story.

I wrote many letters when I was a child, to my father in Mexico, telling him about my life in England, my friends etc. He loved getting them, and it made us stay very close even though we only saw each other every other year and rarely spoke by phone. (And he wrote me, like four letters EVER. It was a one-way conversation, but deeply appreciated, I know.)

But it also, I think, provided a regular outlet for developing my writing, from the age of 7 and right until he died when I was 20.

Obvious, really. Yet I hadn’t connected the letter-writing with any burgeoning writing talent, maybe until just now…