"It seems to me" says Fanny Hill sagely, "Life is very complicated and we must all get through it as best we can." Or at least the gorgeous Rebecca Night says it, because Andrew Davies said it, and maybe even John Cleland said it. And now I'm saying it. It must be true. There's an interesting little video about Andrew's adaptation of the classic !8th Century novel here.
Some good lines in Corrie this week, too. "I could do with a Get Out Of Gail Free card" sighs Eileen, sagging at the prospect of another close encounter as her son prepares to limp into a wedlock-facing situation with Gail's daughter Sarah. That's if psycho-boy David doesn't lob a sabataged girder at the vicar or ramraid the Registry - it is a few weeks since he casually semi-slaughtered anyone so he's overdue for a kill. Third time lucky, David! Easy to see why Eileen finds Gail creepy: she smiles eerily through adversity, though to be fair that's all she knows of life. You should watch more soaps, Gail, that would wipe the grin off your face. What's this stuff doing on a writer's blog? Well, John Betjeman apparently compared Coronation Street with Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" for scope and range of storylines and characterisations.

It seemed appropriate to spend the embers of the dying year - especially as Frome's big Halloween party was last week - at the movies watching 'And when did you last see your father?' I've never read Blake Morrison, though I do nuzzle next to him on library shelves sometimes, so I'm not sure how faithful the script is to his memoir, but the film leans heavily on the skills and charm of Jim Broadbent and Matthew Beard as young Blake. Any long look at human frailty and death is inevitably moving but this one seems oddly passionless and never really engages with the questions it nags at. Should love be long-suffering? Why not. Life is.

Lured by autumn sunshine Haz and I went to Longleat today - poignantly, the last of our regular-ish weekly writing dates. Haz is moving to a new town, a new job, and a new life. "Be bold, for boldness has magic in it." Goethe's words are as familiar as Klimpt's kiss these days, but it's still not easy to take that leap of faith we need before our wings will grow. Heartfelt good wishes to you Haz, and to all of us making new beginnings.

Off now to Sherborne House to lead a story-writing workshop.
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Always gratifying when people say 'Simply the best...' as they go, and satisfying too to see half a dozen of the audience sitting on the floor 'cos we ran out of chairs... "Madabout Words" in the Merlin foyer on Friday night was a fabulous smorgasbord of stories, poems, and songs. Effusive thank-yous & virtual bouquets to Hazel, Howard, Niamh, Rosie, Alison and Willow, Gordon, Dave, Tracy, and Jill and Mick, for an evening that everyone – performers and audience alike – enjoyed so much. This was also the launch of the ‘Live and Lippy’ DVD, poems from Hazel & me with Howard’s amazing graphics, and I’ll post the Youtube link to the newest track as soon as I’ve got it. More pix at Haz's blog here.

Also this week: An 'Evening with Alan Bennett', billed as 'a great honour and a major occasion for the city of Bath'. Disappointing, even though I didn't expect much. A Forum-full of the city's burghers and a lion of the middlebrow establishment is a recipe for sychophantically cosy rather than stimulating. 'Literary musak' Peter put it, kindly. The readings were anecdotal to the point of trivia, embellished with name-dropping ("Prince Charles was in the audience, laughing loudly") and the sort of louche humour that works better at dinner-parties or on Scott Mills show. It's only that trademark flat fastidious voice that lets him get away with it, I thought, as the auditorium shook with yelps of mirth at the word 'scrotum'. Alan Bennett wrote brilliant observations of ordinary absurdity but this wembley-esque setting simply showed that Peter Kaye does it better. Perhaps authors need a self-help group to protect us from self-exposure beyond our skills. But when so many people are rattling their jewellery, or at least their books for signing, would any resist?

Did you know - and why should you? - that Pride & Prejudice is named as a favourite book in 18,000 blog profiles? I found that out by citing it myself in a retro moment. If the percentage of readers who also blog is quite small, that means around 250,000 people might also rate P&P as a favourite. And many more readers will have enjoyed it. In fact, using the curve-of-normalcy model, about 6 million. Not bad for an English spinster.

And finally... not a cute-cat tree-rescue but a photograph taken by a fireman in California and sent me by Mo. I thought it needed wider viewing.
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It's good to be back in Frome, where creativity oozes from every cranny, with musical art openings and an excellent writers circle meeting as some of the Madabout team limber up for next Friday's words cabaret.
So why do I rush off again, this time to the Cotswolds, to run a one-day story writing course in Farncombe Estate. Highly organised venues always scare me - maybe I'm allergic to delegate tags - but this is a truly gorgeous setting and, though 16 is twice my preferred group size, all the participants stayed focussed amazingly well and produced some great stuff.

Which brings me to this week's post. Occasionally when I catch a glance of my mission statement, up in the corner there with a picture of me last summer, I think it sounds a bit fulsome and gushy. And then I'm sent the finished product of a writerly experience I shared in a small way, and I know I am right to acknowledge these privileges. Step forward Laurence Shelley, if your blisters will let you, and take a bow. "Off the Wall Walking" is simply delightful; for its quirky humour and real humanity, for the candour and sheer excellence of its words.This is a book that doesn't need a journey of a thousand miles; it's written at the spritely pace of each single step, “living at the level of the sentence” as Tobias Wolfe puts it. No website yet, but orders taken at laurenceshelley@aol.com.

It's official: Top Wits are all men, and mainly dead too. My personal favourite Mr Wilde takes the gold in this national poll, with Stephen Fry in bronze position. I do like his objection to animal testing: “they get nervous and get all the answers wrong”.
And as I'm on to quotes, Emily came up with this great one from D.W. Winnicott over breakfast in her sunny garden:"My contribution is to ask for a paradox to be accepted, and tolerated, and respected, and for it not to be resolved." Should we crave closure in our lives? Keats saw human excellence in the negative capability of "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."
And I'm ending this crop of quips with Eckhart: "An artist is not a special kind of person. Every person is a special kind of artist."
Especially in Frome.

I've never been on a coach trip to Bavaria before, and as the day approached I did start to wonder if this might be one of those precious omissions best not remedied. "Ignorance of Großwallstadt is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it and the bloom is gone," Oscar Wilde might have opined, and I'd have agreed.
But I'd have been wrong.
Thirty-eight members of the City of Bath male choir, plus a dozen of us WAGs and a driver with a penchant for appalling jokes, all survived the trip with remarkable good humour, despite a collision between two tankers on the German motorway adding another 7 hours to our lengthy confinement. And the bits in between - the walks and explorations, the hospitality, and above all the singing - were simply superb.
A lads' trip to a region renowned for beer-drinking was never going to be a scout cubs' picnic, but singing really was paramount: in castle vaults and town squares or beside the river at night, always with an energy which superceded mere collective excellence. 'Zestful' is a good word.
Stunning autumn sunshine helped too, and fascinating unexpected gems of local culture - an apple fair in Miltenberg, a falconry display at Cochem.
Our main stop was in Miltenberg, where the gaudy colours and pointy roofs make the old town look like a children's pop-up book and history, bizarrely, doesn't seem to exist beyond medieval times... don't anyone mention Fawlty Towers here. Despite this sense of important evasions and relentless monoculturalism, we're all made welcome at the concert in Großwallstadt which is the focus of this trip, and the evening ends with conviviality and dancing.
Best bit? The uncliquey cameraderie of the trip, and the enjoyment of meeting so many diverse personalities with one thing in common: the passion to sing their socks off.

So maybe that's the secret of a successful Choir trip: take 3 score good-humoured men with zest, great voices, and lots of socks.

Heart-cockles-warming corner: arriving home to a message from Karen Mcleod whose debut novel "In Search of the Missing Eyelash" has been published by Cape with high praise and several translations. Karen is charming enough to attribute me with giving her 'good intelligent advice' during her first steps on the 'long, strange and sometimes arduous journey' that extended her opening line ("I woke up in a foreign armpit") and won her this year's Betty Trask award and - though Karen says it's taken a few months to sink in - the right to call herself an author. You go for it, girl.
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Just back from a long weekend in the wilds of Lancashire walking with my friend Anya in the Ribble valley with no real writerly news, unless you count winning a bottle of fizz at a charity raffle from Fizz off Coronation Street. We - Anya and me that is, not Corrie's Fizz - also went to see romany clairvoyant Omar about whom I can only say: if you're more comfortable with scepticism don't go anywhere near him as he'll seriously rattle your cage.

Off next to Großwallstadt in Bavaria on a charabanc trip with the Bath Male Voice Choir, so there will now be a short intermission.

Omitting to celebrate National Poetry Day is against the poetic Hippocratic oath of Frome, so Monday saw the Library Writers' Group musing and poesying on this year's theme of dreams. Some great pieces emerged, several of which were read in the evening at a small but very pleasant event with a dozen poets - Rose Flint among them - presenting their words at the Poetry Dream Cafe. I especially enjoyed the interval poem created by the entire audience from songs with the word 'dream' in. We got 26 - 'Nights in white satin' and 'The night has a thousand eyes' allowed, but 'Yellow is the colour of my true love's hair' a tad too far-flung.

I've been immersed in reflections on family relationships recently, partly in response to the C4 programme 'Bringing Up Baby' which takes viewers to the fortress of horrors which is the Truby King rearing method of child-rearing. TK was a (male) vet who noticed that calves removed from their mothers gave up wanting or expecting any contact, essentially. Special features of his method are fresh air (all day alone in the garden) solitude (all night alone in a separate room) and no cuddles or eye contact. Claire Verity, the (childless) expert, scoffs at the idea of holding a baby close. 'You're not a kangaroo' she points out acidly. My fascination is not academic: I was 'a Truby King' baby according to my mother, proud of her potty-training. 'Babies who feel abandoned can't learn to trust relationships' is the point arising repeatedly in studio discussions. I'm reminded of all this listening to Colin Firth talking about his new film 'Voyage round my father'. "With every good story, wherever it's set, you feel it's your story." His childhood, he says, left him feeling an outsider, but he's never regretted it - "you see everything with two pairs of eyes" - as the first requisite to be an actor is being confused and seeking attention. Maybe that's true of all creativity. It's a better route than deploring the unalterable past, anyway. I was going to post a pic of sour-faced Ms Verity here but decided Mr Firth in his classic wet-shirt moment is more attractive.

The monthly Fromesebury Group met this week: Debs has delivered her Ultimate Help Manual for supply teachers, and Debby Holt's new book 'The Trouble With Marriage' - "another astute study in relationships" predicts The Bookseller - is out early next year. "There's nothing like humour to encourage a proper perspective" says Debby in her article on why she writes romantic comedies.

Another good-humoured meeting: Words @ Frome Festival convened for snacks, drinks, and consideration of the matter in hand: viz What the bloody 'ell's going on? as Rosie as chair succinctly put it. No-one knows. Festival founder Martin Bax has resigned, and the future of Frome Festival without an artistic director hangs in the balance. With 5 new members on the literary team we decide to continue whatever the outcome, and ideas for 2008 events come flooding in - a mix of old favourites and new ideas. Can we fix it? Yes we can!

Chronicles of Wasted Time corner: I've just found a great facebook group: Procrastinating Writers -"A hang out for all writers who are finding Facebook the perfect place for procrastination. Share your procrastinating tips, online games, pointless applications here."
Well done Kate Harrison for providing that necessary service for idling scribes. I've already trashed a happy hour posting pix of Cyprus & intend to loll here often.
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Spent most of the week catching up with my shadow after a week in Cyprus sun, glad to emerge on Friday for the launch of Three Corners' new CD, fabulously titled 'Stone Age Genes in the Digital Era.' Luscious sensuous stuff, great music and haunting songs. I could survive life easier without books than without music, but my reviewing skills are crass: can I dance to it? and do I like the words? so for a more intelligent appreciation go to their website for the downloads.

Saturday spent poring over aims, strategies, solutions and flapjacks with the Merlin team at The Mill in Rode. Diverse perceptions released by the word game - tempting to make fridge poems with words like INVISIBLE MISUNDERSTOOD CHALLENGING LONELY HARD - good to find concensus with INSPIRING and CREATIVE.

Somewhat belatedly, I've just realised the wonderful Poetry Library on South Bank is open for business again, hurrah. I must hie me there forthwith. Also want to see the Millais exhibition at the Tate - reviewed as "mawkish manipulative masterpieces" - my father's favourite painter after Renoir. He once sweetly likened me to the girl in Les parapluies... possibly the fringe that did it.
Weather again, you see. Even blogging I always take the weather with me.

Foraged facts corner: Less than 40% of people ever buy a book... and of these less than 40% buy less than 2 books a year. That's a lot of lesses. I stole this from Clare Dudman's blog which I often browse for intriguing titbits. Some great pix of snails, too.

PS see what I mean about the fringe? Wish I still had those suede shoes. That's my first wedding, no doubt not the only bride in a psychedelic mini that year but probably the only one with visible hem tacking.
'67 is hot this week on Radio 1 too. I've been enjoying the 40 years-ago-today celebrations all week, fantastic covers like Keane's Under Pressure and vintage greats like Stairway to Heaven and Smoke on the Water... and Beatles too of course. Sergeant Pepper was the backdrop to that summer like no music ever can be these days of diversity and headphones. I'm not mourning, just mentioning.

I’ve noticed it before: that night-drive home from Gatwick acts as a kind of eraser, smudging my vivid recollections into a blur of heat-hazy blue horizons with only highs and lows etched unforgettably.
Waking at dawn in Agios Georgios as collared doves croon and stepping directly from our patio into the pool, that’s indelible. Basking on the soft sand of Turtle Beach & floating in the translucent shallow water of Lara Bay. Sipping beer in shady courtyards, scrumping figs, watching sunsets.
And of course, the cycling – my raison d’etre for a week in the Pathos region was to test-ride the Headwater holiday ‘Secrets of Cyprus Cycling.’ One of those ‘tough job but someone’s got to do it’ assignments. The organisers provide the bikes, book the hotels, and transfer our luggage. Our task is to cycle past olive groves and vineyards watching the sunshine dazzle on the Mediterranean, stopping occasionally for cool Keo until we reach the next friendly hostelry where our bags and supper table are waiting.
And write about it, of course, ideally with enough enthusiasm to encourage others to leap into the saddle and experience the joys of freewheeling 9 kilometres from Kathikas down to Coral Bay and chicaning along the unmade paths of the Akamas to secluded beaches where the turtles lay their eggs and the rare wild lilies grow.

In this idyll, can there be any lows? There was that feral cat that jumped into our moussaka. The occasional peripatetic mosquito.
My main gripe, though, is serious
– and I'm part of the problem.
It’s the English.
Last time I was in Cyprus was 5 years ago and I stayed in a rural village in the central area. I was besotted with the harshly beautiful landscape, the gypsum hills, ochre grassland, scorching blue of the sky. I walked for miles, and resisted expat dinner invitations, preferring my balcony with figs and halloumi cheese and local wine watching the sun set. And during this time I saw a tiny house in a lemon grove which was up for sale for £24,000 and if I’d had any way of raising that much money then I’d have bought it.
So I’m not standing in judgment from any high moral ground. I understand why the entire coast, and even fertile farming land, is smothered with new-build holiday-homes like virulent nappy rash. It’s the dream for so many of us: sun, sea, sand, and sound property investment. Only, with prices ten times higher and air travel unsustainable in cost as well as carbon footprint, it seems impossible this goldrush bubble won't burst. Thousands of bougainvillea-edged pools, while Cyprus reservoirs are gutted after two arid years. Thousands of quickly-constructed edifices locked up empty for months, in place of the rural families that gave the land its energy and spirit.
Well, I don’t want to come across like a glum Green Meanie, but believe me, these ‘English hills’ gave us much to ponder as we cycled.
..... It's the rich that get the pleasure,
..... It's the land that get the shame,
..... It's the same the whole world over,
..... And we're all to bloody blame.

Bristol's BIG MOUTH CABARET, the last before comperes Rosemary & Tom take a year's sabbatical, was a monster bash of performance poets with a glittering line-up that lured me & Hazel to St Paul's Crypt at open-door time on Tuesday. Quite unnecessary of course, poetry events are required by statute to start late. "All we're doing is putting the pieces of the jigsaw together on your behalf" Byron Vincent explained inscrutibly, presenting macabre characters from mentalist mates to the Marquis de Sardines. Byron claims to have a pact with fellow poet Nathan to perform only new work from now on; I applaud the intent but mourn the passing of such surreal lines as "the finding of the baby, the swapping it for glue". Jude Simpson brought the cream of her Edinburgh set, with 'Secret Rapper' as cherry topping.
After Dr Joel's musical interlude, Nathan Filer presented his usual - self-styled - political, pertintent, poignant pieces, with his usual stylish eccentricity. I hope the ode to Wikipedia doesn't join the list of now-abandoned love poems. Headliner Elvis McGonagall had terse words on Tony Blair for "skipping off to the Middle East and taking 10 minutes of my set with him" but is making a start on analysing the Brown bounce: "brooding psychopath, now a love god?". A great set, with welcome returns from David Cameron and James Blunt among others. Poetry's been called the new rock'n'roll, with Elvis the new Elvis and Byron an Arctic Monkey, and there's a truth in the triteness: new material is essential, but us fans love the oldies too.

Still on spoken words, I'm delighted to see producer Howard has put another track, alphabetti serendipity, from our upwardly-mobile DVD out on Youtube. Launch of Crysse & Hazel, Live & Lippy, is October 26th at the Madabout Words cabaret in the Merlin foyer.

And now for something completely different: The Importance of Being Earnest, which opened at Bath Theatre Royal on Wednesday. A satisfyingly no-tricks production, exquisite visually. Much choreography had gone into being-seated styles and the parasols seemed like members of the cast. Penelope Keith had the onerous accolade of single billing on the posters and responded by under-playing Lady Bracknell’s utterances in a manner that may have rotated Edith Evans in her grave. The interrogation of Jack Worthing, designed to have that young man and the audience trembling with apprehension & awe, was conducted more like a cosy interview with a potential care worker. But everyone looked wonderful and the tableaux were great. A lovely evening.

Change of mood again: now well warmed-up to watch others perform, I spent all Thursday at the Merlin Theatre where 30 different acts were show-casing work “Made in Somerset”, watched by delegates from all over the SW & beyond. Impossible to see all, but I managed six - including drama ranging from Festival of Fools’ spontaneous theatre to carefully plotted monologue pieces, and contemporary dance from local heroes Stetsaphunk’s hip hop to Mark Bruce Company’s innovative explorations. Home, groggy with imagery & words, to pack: Peter & I are off cycling in Cyprus next week. Weather forecast: 34 C & climbing…
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'Well done to you all for finding Shropshire' was our greeting at The Hurst. Well done to the Arvon for finding such a wonderfully easygoing, good-humoured group, trawling from Sydney to the States. A great week, stimulating and thought-provoking, though it's left me temporarily unable to construct a sentence without wanting to savage it.
Jane Austen declared she would write about "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like" but even that felt difficult to me with our theme of 'I remember'. Can't blame the tutors for that - Mark Haddon and Will Fiennes were both brilliant, generous with their time & support and munificent with their their epigramatic gems.
"Being in love with language is a way of being in love with the world" says Will, and shows us the oak tree outside, its higgledy-piggledy silhouette and lobate leaves in fists. Quirkus Sessile. "All writing is the act of giving names."
Mark reminds us that the writing part is only half the equation. "Everything you write has to entertain. Readers don't need explanations, we want to know what happened next."
Every session is hands-on, every exercise reinforces the message: what matters in writing is concrete details and rhythmic qualities. Afternoons are times for writing and walking; this is a fabulous location, with forests behind us and a lovely walk along the lanes to Clun where John Osborne, who lived here, is buried. Evenings are times for listening to our tutors sharing their words.
"Does it get easier?"
"No."

Home just in time for the Writers Circle barbecue hosted by gourmet chef Mike, a brilliant night.

"It is a lovely hybrid form, a cross between a poem and a novel. The short story allows us in a short space of time to understand huge things, huge dilemmas. They don't hang about. They don't waste any time. They swoop down and get you like a sea gull diving down to take the bread from your hand." - Jackie Kay, and more, on an excellent short story site I discovered. Jackie quotes Chekov's view of the craft: ‘It is better to say not enough than to say too much, because I don't know why!'. After last week I feel I know why, it's how that's hard.