So this is an astonishing 500th blog, which means around half a million words. I’ve relished the opportunity blogging allows for ‘thinking out loud’. In other words for experimenting with thoughts without the need to factor in the kind of criteria that restrain in the publishing arena.
I’ve given up on celebrating the 500th in favour of a(nother) short piece on cafes. Predictably I’m writing this is a café.
During a recent trip to Sinalunga in Tuscany I returned to two cafes I’d written in four years previously. I was for a second time accompanying the Mickleham Choral Society on their tour to Italy. Being a groupie or hanger on permits time apart. And I relish time apart. There was a noble attempt to recruit all hangers on into a WhatsApp group to plan get togethers (largely around football and alcohol). I tried to give a false name to avoid participating but had in the end to submit. In fact they were a good natured, friendly and welcoming group and I found myself relaxing in their company, most notably during a trip to Chiusi while the choir were rehearsing for their concert; we sat at a long table outside a bar and chatted in the face of mild rainfall.
I did a recent blog on ‘red lines’ – namely, firm lines we draw and decide not to cross – for example, in opposing racism, sexism, disablism, autocratic governance or proto-fascism. In this I stressed the relevance of context, historical and present. My own inclination is not to raise controversial/political issues in and around our village choir, although if others do I engage. Not that any of my personal red lines were traversed in Italy, far from it. In fact I had an illuminating conversation in Chiusi with another hanger on, a retired documentary film maker who recounted how Thatcher had intervened with the BBC to edit out footage of police violence in a documentary on the miner/police confrontation at Orgreave.
But this pleasant ‘mixing in’ was Plan B and I had a Plan A involving cafes and my laptop.
Our delightful accommodation was 100 metres off Garibaldi Piazza at the summit of the town. It was a square bordered by impressive buildings, ecclesiastical and secular. Plus two cafes. The main café used by the choir and those accompanying it in 2022 and 2026 was the Bar Al Angolo. On the corner of the piazza it felt very familiar. We regularly invaded any unoccupied outside seats while the regulars, mostly middle-aged and older men, sequestered their usual pitches. It was an ideal forum in which to renew old acquaintances and forge new links. I’m hopeless at names but can now talk to people I’d only previously known by sight. If this makes me sound unsociable, then that’s probably a fair surmise. I can ‘do sociability’ but just as often relish time alone – time writing: ‘to write is to be.’ I was an only child. Maybe I’m addicted. I don’t want to paint (too little natural talent), learn a craft like basket-weaving (not interested) or participate in companionable indoor activities (like card games). My weekly badminton adventures were over when I ruptured my Achilles heel. But I can still write and publish stuff 13 year after retiring from academia.
In fact in the little time we had in Tuscany – essentially three and a half days – I attended two skilful performances by the Mickleham choir, in combination with either one or two local choirs in Sinalunga and Chiusi respectively (I skipped a third performance as part of a Catholic Mass in Sinalunga). I also relished a coach trip to Cortona, a favourite town of ours we had visited two or three times before. The last time we visited we drove into Corona in a hire care, or rather tried to. It was a smallish vehicle and declined to climb right up to the town centre. Fortunately our hotel was halfway up and, leaving it smoking vigorously, we accepted the offer from a hotel employee to retrieve and park it more sensibly. Cortona was much the same but busier, as if it had been belatedly discovered by tourists since our last sojourn. We had a delightful group lunch. I bought myself two leather goods. One was a bag to carry wallet and phone, and the other a leather-covered notebook (I have about ten of these already, if of variable quality, most altogether too delightful to actually use).
Back to writing. When the choir were rehearsing I was free to write. If free of my fellow hangers on I secreted myself in a corner of Bar El Angelo, where we were known and treated with jovial friendliness. I suspect they had been forewarned about our imminent arrival. Anyway, they were delightful, as was their beer, coffee and ice-cream. But there was a second café off the piazza if solitude was my aim. The staff were equally friendly and put up with my serial requests for cappuccinos while I wrote. My topic? Well, I already had a full draft of a book on the sociological phenomenon of stigma. I’d got fed up with waiting for a decision from a first publisher, so had written it while awaiting a decision from a second publisher. Which I now have, fortunately. I’ll return to my draft to revise/refine later.
But in Sinalunga my attention turned to trying my hand at writing a novel. Well I say ‘novel’. I’ve now drafted around 14,000 words. Somewhat to my surprise a man was murdered – or was it murder? – 10,000 words in. So maybe the novel has transmuted into a thriller. If so, I’ve no idea as yet who did it (though I will of course be the first to find out). I am reconciled to this piece of writing being totally experimental. I am not invested in its being good, or even worthwhile. I’m certainly not assuming it will be publishable. But I’m enjoying playing with the narrative as it unfolds. Interesting query: how many novelists/thriller writers devise their plots in advance, and how many improvise as they write? I’ve always assumed the former dominate, but maybe not.