Living under a cloud

Most of Europe’s airspace has been closed for a couple of days, and it looks set to continue. With the London Book Fair starting on Monday this could be disastrous for publishers seeking to buy and sell international rights. Without any visitors from overseas it’s going to be unusually quiet at Earl’s Court this year. And that’s a shame, because Summersdale has just invested in an impressive new exhibition stand which not many people will get to see. At least anyone stranded elsewhere can enjoy our new website which is planned to go live on Monday. www.summersdale.com

Volcano dust permitting, I’ll be heading to Brazil in a few weeks, so I’m ramping up my daily study time (from half an hour to about two hours) in the desperate hope that I’ll achieve some degree of fluency by the time I get there. I’m getting to the point where the pathetically limited vocabluary of Portuguese words in my head is starting to float around my consciousness all the time. I look at a white cup and describe it in Portuguese. I see a number and I convert it to Portuguese. I look at my dog and work out the phrase to say that he smells a bit whiffy. I look at a bottle of wine and realise I haven’t got to that part of the course yet, so I just drink it.

The extra language study time has had an impact on my novel writing and editing time. Yesterday I wrote virtually nothing, but at least I managed to work on an entire chapter today. I extended my research into my Portofino location beyond Google Street View, this time incorporating amateur video footage of the marina and the town from footage uploaded by individuals to YouTube. I’m currently on (A4 single spaced) page 168 out of 289. Progress has been too slow this month. I really need to get through this draft before the end of April so that I can concentrate on writing the next draft in Brazil. I prefer to start a fresh draft there than to have to finish off an old one that’s been dragging on for too long. If Iceland doesn’t stick a cork in its volcano soon, however, I might not be going anywhere, and all that lingo studying will have been for nothing. Oh pederasta.

More volcanoes

Just when I thought I was safe from the threat of volcanoes (see my recent posts from Lanzarote), I come home to find that Iceland – not content with helping themselves to the savings of English charities – has the cheek to squirt a whole load of volcanic ash in Britain’s direction. I couldn’t actually see a single speck of the dust that is apparently up there somewhere, but it was sufficient to close all of Britain’s airports today. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to look at the sky without jet contrails streaking across it, so this afternoon was quite special in that respect. For producers of period dramas it was a great day.

It’s not been a great day for my writing, though. I ended up spending most of it catching up with e-mails and then visiting a garden centre to look at the prices of palm trees (I want some in my front garden and another one by the pool in the back garden to give it a tropical feel). A skanky, half dead tree with its fronds stuck on with Sellotape will set you back £600. Bargain. I wonder if they do them in plastic?

Next week is the London Book Fair, and I’ll be heading up that way on Monday. It’s my company’s 20^th anniversary party, so I’m really looking forward to an evening of nostalgia and being reminded of how old I am. I can still remember what it was like on the day the company was formed. I sat at the desk in my bedroom, told myself I was now a publisher, twiddled my thumbs, and wondered what to do.

Can’t say it’s all that different twenty years on, really.

Understanding Mayan glyphs

The weather was decidedly on the scorchio side today, with a hot sun burning through thin clouds by lunchtime and the thermometer soaring to almost thirty degrees. Being British I therefore put on my heaviest Levis 501s and a long-sleeved shirt, lest any of the aforementioned solar rays should get anywhere near my skin. It wasn’t sufficient to protect my nose, however, which is now glowing bright enough to distract passing ships.

The bulk of the day was spent touring the insides of several volcanoes, which I was shocked to learn had last erupted only two hundred years ago. In geological timescales that’s just a nanosecond, which means the whole island of Lanzarote is anything but volcanically extinct. I found myself wondering what kind of protection the solid roof of my rented Mercedes A class would offer from raining lava and pyroclastic flows. It didn’t look good, especially considering the size of the boulders that are strewn all over the place, but it had to be a smidgen better than being stuck in a convertible when one of the mountains blows its top.

With the touristy stuff out of the way I settled down to do some background research for my novel. I’ve always loved the look of Mayan glyphs. It’s a soft, curvy style of artistic writing, in contrast to the perhaps more familiar sharp, angular ancient Egyptian scribblings. The Maya communicated with squashed faces, stylised animal outlines and other shapes to depict words, actions, numbers and ideas. They were able to record complex and detailed histories in stone, although the meaning of their written legacy was forgotten by natives and foreigners alike until researchers in the 19^th century started to piece together the fragmentary clues that had survived.

I’m starting with the basics of the symbols today. I’ve learnt that there’s a pattern in the way each glyph is read, which is kind of from left to right and top to bottom within the square panel. Recognising what the pictures are meant to be is not easy, especially when dealing with the original rock carvings which are sometimes worn, mossy or damaged. My goal is to create an original stele for my novel. With the aid of a guidebook it shouldn’t be impossible: I think it might be a similar challenge to when I tried to write a ‘new’ Canterbury Tale in full Chaucerian English. Very slow going at first, but not all that hard after a while. Time will tell if that’s just hugely over-optimistic. I must go and put some cream on my nose now.