The gypsy question...again

When we lived in Budapest we were shocked to hear otherwise educated and open-minded Hungarians speak disparagingly of ciganyok or gypsies. Gypsies and travellers are getting a bad rap in England too. Recently a vacant lot near my husband's workplace, located near the Crewe railworks, has been descended upon by a nomadic group, presumably without planning permission from the local council if not the owner's knowledge as well. A concrete lot riddled with garbage, weeds and a broken fence in the middle of a busy intersection hardly seems the ideal place to park a dozen or so caravans along with a couple of large Audis and a BMW. One cannot help but wonder what the local residents think of their new neighbours taking up residence overnight virtually in their own backyards. Bitter controversy is underway in the UK on just this topic. Despite the fact that there is a shortage of authorized gypsy/traveller pitch sites and the population is apparently growing, one cannot help but sympathize with long-standing locals who feel they have been granted fewer rights by the courts than their itinerant neighbours.

Desperate for sport

What does a Canadian ex-pat desperate for hockey do? In a country gripped by footy fever it's a difficult question. Obviously the Christmas visit back home didn't do the trick, with professional hockey players on strike. The only answer of course is to take an Austrian friend up on a proposed birthday present: to visit his hometown of Innsbruck and take in a couple of IIHF World Championship games. Then throw in a round or three of golf for a truly great celebration. Happy birthday, Johnny!

Homer meets quantum physics (a love story)

Remember Penelope waiting for Odysseus as he battled stormy seas, sirens and witches, all on account of a peevish pantheon? Imagine if Odysseus had been afflicted with Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a genetic disorder which periodically and without warning transports a person to his past or future. What fun the gods would have had with the Greek hero and with his faithful wife Penelope as she waited for him to return to her, not always safely, and learned to live with and accept his spontaneous disappearances. Such is the fate of Henry and Clare in Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. The book has been around long enough for talk of a movie to circulate. Read the novel first. Despite the time-travelling element, it's a down-to-earth love story with engaging, likeable characters.

Speak British, Mummy!

Kassie doesn't ask anymore. After three years she knows it's not going to happen. Although my Canadian accent shows no sign of fading, and British writer friends tell me I need to work on my Northern dialect, my vocabulary has changed significantly since taking up residence in the UK. I now prefer "rubbish" to "garbage" and use "mean" properly, to mean cheap or frugal as opposed to cruel. I even understood the delivery man yesterday whose only words to me were: "Cheers, duck. Ta-ra."

Just from his dialect and particulary the use of "duck", I knew him to be a native of nearby Stoke-on-Trent. Around here women are more likely to be called "luv" (much more preferable). One of my swim-class friends calls me "petal" and sometimes "flower", better still. (I either call people by name or not at all.) And I still use the typical Canadian greeting "How are you?" when met with the local "Are you all right?".

As Kassie is soon learning, some things change but many stay the same.

Recent travels

We managed just two excursions this past April. You can check out our tour of the historic working estate of Shugborough near Stafford, as well as our recent visit to Birmingham, at our Travels in the United Kingdom website.

In medias res

We all know it's best to grab a reader (or be grabbed) right at the start of a novel. First and foremost we want action, not backstory. For this reason, it's sometimes best to start a story in the middle of things when the action is at its peak and fill in explanatory detail later through flashback, conversation or internal monologue.

But what happens when you're at the middle of your story and you get bogged down? You've set up the conflict nicely, know where you're headed—when the climax will jump out and once again snap the reader's attention—but in that limbo land between it can get pretty nasty for the writer, a prosaist's Slough of Despond, if you will. I'm there right now and it's a slow, painful process, kind of like picking your way through swampy ground with heavy mud-caked boots.

Or it could be that I've stopped biting my nails, thanks to bitter polish, and all my inspiration hitherto came from nibbling at my fingertips!