Archive for the ‘nostalgia’ Category

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 So my knowledge is fairly vague and out of date as it is…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…

Posted on June 4, 2008 - by MG

One of those rambling posts about the vagaries of life

I am doing blogging all wrong.

I’ve been reading other people’s blogs and I can see that mine is Not Quite Right.

Well I’m going to do a post that’s more typische. Part rant, part rave, part diary, part confessional.

Rant: Where to start? I’m not much of a ranter over things that don’t directly concern me and over which I have zero control. Not saying there’s anything wrong with ranting, in fact I seem to have voluntarily surrounded myself with people who love a rant; my daughter, my husband, my agent to name only three. Maybe that’s why no ranting. Ranters need to be listened to. And that, it seems, is increasingly my role.

However, I did recently get slightly involved in the age-ranging debate about putting labels like 5+, 7+, 11+ on children’s books, although only in the private e-space of a members-only online writers’ club. But actually, meh. The businesswoman in me dislikes the attempt to stop a perfectly legitimate marketing initiative. Last time I looked publishers sell the books and do the deals. Ifnwhen the sales director at my publishers phones me up and asks me to make sales calls to sell my books to the major chains, then maybe I’ll start to feel I have any place telling her how to run the business.

Rave: Now what I AM is a raver. So many things to enthuse over, so little time. Let’s just divide the things that have recently amused or fascinated me into categories.

TV: All the usual suspects for me: Battlestar Galactica continues to swoop, Lost continues to be gloriously daft-yet-compelling, still laughing over Peep Show’s use of a highly literary reference as a euphemism for erm…well I can’t better it so let’s just say ‘doing a Chesil beach’; reruns of Sex And The City. How I love Samantha. She somehow reminds me of Jessica from Pokemon’s Team Rocket.  And a surprise new addition to my highly selective TV viewing is BBC4′s US import Mad Men – set in 1960′s Madison Avenue and the cutting edge world of advertising. The men are urbane, sexist and wear natty suits; the woman are gorgeous, ambitious, under-appreciated, professionally limited and don’t complain when their bottoms get slapped in the office. Everybody smokes and all these macho men wilt the minute one of these supposedly suborbinate women turns her ravenous gaze upon one of them. You can sense the powerplay just waiting to happen. Ah the good-old-days when a pretty secretary could take a powerful man down. Mostly I enjoy the offices though. They remind me so much of my father’s set up at Mexicana de Cobre. Just good ol’ plain nostalgia.

Reading: I’m very busy writing so haven’t read much lately. I bought some books by Cornelia Funke; Inkheart and Inkspell and some books for younger readers that I’ll read to the little ‘un. I have, however, been enjoying reading The Spectator and New Scientist, which I can manage in bite-size chunks. Two Speccie articles made me laugh out loud today, one by Rod Liddle about the Eurovision Song Contest (it wasn’t political; Eastern Europeans just don’t ‘get’ decent 12-bar blues based pop music), one by Deborah Ross, but then she always makes me laugh. Right-wing intellectuals are so much funnier than left-wing ones. And therefore sexier. I’d have PJ O’Rourke over George Monbiot, any day. But then the left does have Naomi Klein. So maybe it’s gender specific?

Geekchic: Loving my Sony Vegas video editing software. Hey I never said I didn’t have some special interests.

Podcasts: The usual trio of Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Radio5 movie review show, Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time and the Litopia After Dark podcasts continue to equip me with the knowledge and ideas to do my job.

Music: Performance Channel is screening a Beethoven piano sonata every evening. I caught one while half asleep yesterday. It wasn’t one I knew and being on the verge of sleep was struggling to place it – Brahms? Schubert? Beethoven? It sounded very German and very wonderful. I lay there thinking about Wilhelm Meister and Marienbad and Werther and other ghosts from the past, conversations with my mother.

Diary: Well not much to report here. I have been editing book 2 of Joshua; ICE SHOCK. It’s been hard work but I finally made it through the whole script, having addressed all Editor’s notes. Now I need to write two short new sections and then do a continuity check. But I’ll do a separate post about this. And liasing closely with the publicity department at Scholastic to put things in place for a book tour starting next week. Yay!

Confessional: Well wouldn’t you like to know. I don’t dare to be open about such stuff. Would cause a rare old scandal, no doubt.

Posted on May 22, 2008 - by MG

ManU’s Premiership and Champions League Double – I’m faint with joy

The first time that United won the European Cup was 1968 – when I was too young to appreciate them. By the time I became a fan we were in the Second Division. The dizzing hights of a European Cup win seemed to me, quite unimaginable.

My best friend was a boy called Eoin who lived across the road. One day Eoin’s mum told me about United’s glorious past, and the Munich air crash. Quite clearly I can remember wondering if ever in my lifetime again I’d see a United team of that calibre.

Eoin and I grew up going to United games together – at one stage most home games. When we were 14 Eoin moved to Ireland and I started going to matches with my friend Sally. The best we could hope for in those days was the FA Cup, which we won a very respectable number of times. Sally and I even saw us win once – United 4- Brighton 1 (1983?).

But still the Division One Championship and with it the triumph in Europe – it was always Liverpool or Nottingham Forest, never us.

And then Fergie arrived in town. Eoin sent me a letter once where he lamented that his young daughter should be considered for selection – the team could hardly get worse. Thank goodness in those days they didn’t fire coaches after a couple of poor seasons, and he had a chance to build up the team.

But WHAT drama, what emotion, what an incredible achievement! As I watched the Champions League Final last night I was totally awestruck by the levels of both teams – not that it was the best game of football ever – although it was a fabulous match. But just the levels of fitness, determination, the strength and energy needed to compete at that level; the endurance.

Bad luck Chelsea. Seriously worthy opponents…but it was our night.