Madeleine Lily Dannhauser was born on Friday 25th November (Thanksgiving) at 10.31pm and for her we are truly grateful. Our brand new granddaughter weighed in at 7 lbs 4 ozs and will be known as ‘Maddie’. Her father, (Master Mind) our son-in-law wants to know what ‘Maddie’ will be called in Ms Paige Turner’s Blog. I shall think further and talk with our daughter (Miss Trial) who was on her feet in court until 39 weeks pregnant and let you all (my three readers) know in due course.
There are two places left on Creative Ink for Writers’ course (Get Inspired) beginning Tuesday 10th January for five weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield. £170 to include up to 3000 word assessment, copious hand outs and coffee and biscuits. Email me for more info’.

En Attendant – by Ms Paige Turner

It’s an apt phrase: ‘en attendant’ meaning ‘waiting’ …
I spent 1982 and 83 as an attendant to Queen Hippolyta at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. And as an invisible First Fairy attending to Titania, the queen. I spent those summer seasons waiting for my break in more senses than one.
‘En Attendant Godot’- Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’. My mother was none too polite about that play. To what do we attend? To what do we give attention? Well, when we wait we attend to what we are waiting for whether this be the publication of poetry collections or babies. Waiting gives us time to think …

Creative Ink for Writers Spring Term 2017
Enrolments are now being taken for Creative Ink for Writers’ spring term 2017 which begins on Tuesday 10th January for 5 weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield from 10. 00 am until midday. The cost is £170 to include up to 3000 word assessment and coffee and biscuits. The theme is Nourishment and you can email me for a syllabus. The course already has enough numbers to run but there are still some places left at time of writing. Limited to 12 places.
‘Get that Book Out of You’ course/spring term will work this way: £120 for 1 ¼ hours one to one consultation with 3500 word assessment/edit/proof read and 500 word synopsis which can be submitted before or after the meeting. This arrangement can begin right away and is for writers who would like a bit of gentle pushing on their words and deadlines. Just email me if you are interested. All other assessment details can be found on my website: www.janmoranneil.co.uk
Creative Ink for Writers’ News
I have received one of the two honourable mention (sounds wonderful) in the New Contrast SA Magazine’s Poetry Competition. Congratulations to Josē Claassen who won the competition.
www.newcontrast.net
Rhyme & Reason anthology/diary is now on sale. http://www.renniegrove.org/support/our-shops/online-shop/product/desk-diary-2017

Pantglas

We silently inspect the flowers’ dewdrop tears –
silk roses –
rows of voiceless roses – which will never perish
never blush.
Satcheled shoulders quickly turned away on that day –
died October 21st 1966.

We inspect inscriptions on graves which point upwards
like thumb nails
towards this unexpected midsummer sun.
We file by
and like intruders examining other parent’s letters –
we read –
died October 21st 1966.

Our children’s’ footfalls echo in those gaps between
measured words –
the little that is said – just this and that and then …

“I collected pennies for them that November –
not for the Guy.”
Footfalls …
and “I was in Streatham Hill when I read the news …”
Footfalls …
“Did they close the Cardiff schools?”

And so to Pantglas where the sun turns inward and
we tread –
daring the ground which scarcely whispers now of
chalked blackboards,
white plimsolls,
inky fingers,
carbolic soap,
blotting paper,
echoed laughter,
life,
half terms,
exams.

Aberfan.

At St Mary’s by Jan Moran Neil

Mary Berry is everywhere.
Wherever I go, Mary Berry is there.
She’s on the billboards and in the magazines
even in the news for the Church Diocese.
Mary Berry’s on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’
and at seventy nine she is suddenly a star.
Mary Berry, Mary Berry, Mary Berry,
featured in the broadsheets with her autobiography,
Mary Berry is a ‘Recipe for Success’:
pure confection Mary Berry and sweetly nothing less.
It’s Mary Berry, Mary Berry wherever I may go:
Mary Berry is on Facebook, Twitter, radio.
Last Christmas I went to church and my daughter said, “Oh, look.
Look, Mum. There’s Merry Berry, that famous celebrity cook.”
And I am thinking as I am sitting in my pew,
Mary Berry should be canonized: she can have her cake and eat it too.

The Chrysalis Academy, Tokai, Cape Town.

What am I doing here on this spring September morning? Sixty five pairs of female Xhosa and Cape Coloured eyes look at my husband and me and wonder ‘what is this old white couple doing here’. I am asked by Earl Mentor, their workshop leader, to speak for a few minutes and tell them what we are doing here and I have to think hard. I’ve known Earl, a wiry, energetic, passionate Cape Coloured for four years. I first met Earl and his passion for youth empowerment at the Desmond Tutu HIV Youth Foundation Centre in Masiphumelele, Fish Hoek. He is now working for Peace Jam which helps fund development projects like these: 195 young girls from Cape townships have signed a contract to stay for three months at the Chrysalis Academy in Tokai. Like Earl, some of them have a less than (and for want of a better phrase) whiter than white back stories. Many of these young women have been sexually and emotionally abused or in turn, have abused drugs and alcohol. We have seen one of the other three groups of sixty five girls marching in uniforms in the bright cool spring sunlight. We’ve seen their rooms: simply and solely ten narrow beds with army style blankets. Earl has told us that 80% of the girls aged 18- 24 years have children, being minded by the children’s grandparents or the girls own grandparents. And the girls elect to come and eat discipline: healthy food, healthy outdoor activities (many limp from the previous day’s running) and empowering workshops like the one Earl is delivering this morning. Consistency and punctuality form good habits. We are what we do and peppered throughout the workshop we repeat: I am beautiful. Even my husband does this.
Three assistants sit at the side with clipboards and make notes. It’s important that the Xhosa and Cape Coloured communities not only encourage these young women’s potential strengths but discover those who could eventually become leaders and role models for the next generation. Not all young women have the educational opportunity or gritty determination of Khuls Nkatshu whose semi-autobiographical story I wrote in my play which she performed so beautifully at the Masambe, Baxter Theatre last March summer. I say ‘semi-autobiographical’ as although Khuls’s own back story and hopes and aspirations are embedded in ‘A President in Waiting …’ the writer in me transposed Khuls to the fictional character Khululwa (meaning Liberty) and gave her the job of domestic char with little opportunity to become a national leader. What Peace Jam and Earl who also runs Fruit-Nation hope is that the fictional Khululwa and these 195 girls might come to be leaders of their own lives, or even, like Khuls Nkatshu and Earl Mentor: leaders in their own communities.
I look up at the Power Point words which loom above us in this echoing hall: MAJORITY, POWER, PRIVILEGE and MINORITY. The girls have been divided into four groups and asked to brainstorm what these words mean to them and present their findings. I say: ‘You must be wondering why my husband and I are here to experience your workshop. We are in the minority but I thank Earl for giving me the opportunity to voice my feelings amongst you all who are the majority. It’s a privilege to be here, to learn and hope you will be empowered by this three month programme.’ (I’m trying to get in the four buzz words.)
When the four groups get up to perform their brainstorming of these four words the audience of girls shout LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION. Applause comes in the form of not clapping but the clicking of fingers. MAJORITY is a BIG ‘yes yes’ word. MINORITY is a small ‘no no’ word but still can have a powerful voice.
When we mingle at the end with a spring bonding exercise of lifting one member of the group to place a cone as far from the starting line as possible my sticking place with these young women transpires to be my revelation that our first grandchild is en route ETA November. I become painfully aware of these young women’s homesickness for their children. Human beings often harbour the notion that being transported might provide an answer. They ask if I will take them to my home in London. Perhaps knowing that this is a tall ambition the young lady with the shortest arms and short limping leg sidles up to me and asks if I will just take her back to my local Fish Hoek.
There are no simple answers here. Inter-relationships between cultures and living conditions for the majority are far from adequate but there is a huge energy at work trying. Earl Mentor is very busy.
www.fruitnation.co.za
www.peacejam.org

Dear Writer by Ms Paige Turner – Blog 146

I recently received an email from a writer who said they had been offered a publishing contract for their children’s book but on receiving the contract realised they had to pay for the privilege. What, she asked, should she do? Here was my reply:

Dear Writer,

Firstly let me congratulate you on completing your book. Many people dream of writing one and for most, that’s what it will always be: a dream.
To answer some of the queries you raised in your email to me.
1. If a publisher is asking you for money to publish your book then this is self-publishing. There is nothing wrong with self- publishing but you do need to have time, money and energy to promote your book as publishers working in this way rarely give as much air time to your book as is necessary to make money from it. They have made the money from you. Traditional publishers and agents need to make money from the sales of your book so they need to know your book is going to, well, sell.
2. The books that don’t slip from the agents’ and publishers’ desks are those which have first been read by the intern sitting in the corner of the office knee deep in the slush pile. These interns read first pages. You need to get your intern turning your page. How do you do this?
a) You draft, re-draft, edit, re-draft. Books which get past the intern’s knees have been re-written several times. I bet your book is great. I bet the people you love and like, love and like your book. But remember, the agent and publisher are in the business of making money and they want to read something that is fully cooked. So if you’re not sure how to re-write, what do you do?
b) You submit your words to someone like me who has been reading, editing, proof-reading
and assessing for 30 years. (If you give me your wordage I will fix on a price.) Someone like me should give you an honest appraisal of your book and also clean up the grammatical errors you are not seeing.
c) If a book is really good I then suggest an onward journey to agents and publishers without any guarantee that it will be sold to these higher beings. But of course, I do know some of these higher beings as I’ve been around for some time. But I only make these suggestions to a writer if the final draft is good and as good as it can be.
Whatever you choose to do, dear writer, I wish you well. Writing is a wonderful trip but a lengthy one. Please keep me informed of yours.
I hope this helps.

Creative Ink Tuesdays ‘Get Inspired’ starting October 4th 10. 00 am until midday is full. Theme/Journeys.
Three places left on the ‘Get that Book’ course, 4000 words assessment and a one hour and bit consultation. (£120) Email me.

Ms Paige Turner Mst Cantab, BEdHons, CSSD, Cert Ed
I’ve counted 26 letters after my name. That’s if I’ve counted correctly because letters are my thing and not numbers. I have a whole alphabet after my name; but I can’t drive on motorways, bake a cake or climb mountains. I just like looking at the latter.
So if you didn’t do great in your GCSEs or A Levels you have your whole life ahead of you to bake cakes. (More on baking cakes and Mary Berry in the weeks to come.)
If you write me a letter don’t forget to put my 26 letters after my name so the postman will know. But even this middleman or woman is being phased out with email missives.
If you’re the first person to inbox me here with what all those 26 letters correctly stand for then I will give you a free assessment and proof read a poem or flash fiction up to 200 words on the theme of Passports. This I do well when I’m not on the M25.
Creative Ink Tuesdays ‘Get Inspired’ starting October 4th 10. 00 am until midday is full. Theme/Journeys.
Three places left on the ‘Get that Book’ course, 4000 words assessment and a one hour and bit consultation. (£120) Email me.

Blog 144 – Holes in the Laptop by Ms Paige Turner.
I was up until 2.30 am this morning reading Stephen King’s novel ‘Misery’: an author is incarcerated by a serial killer, former nurse Annie Wilkes. She forces (this verb is a gross understatement) him to bring his central character named Misery back to life. The author had got fed up with Misery dominating his professional writing life. He soon gets fed up with Annie Wilkes: his number one reading fan dominating his reality.
King’s author talks about ‘holes in the paper’. These are different kind of holes from ‘plot holes’ where the number one reader knows they are being ‘cheated’ by the author. You know, those good old ‘deus ex machinas’: the contrived ending or mechanical manoeuvres of the plot which serve only a lazy writer. (Annie, number one reader gets pretty nasty when she is confronted with a plot hole or ‘dirty birdie’ cheat.)
King’s author’s ‘holes in the paper’ are his escape from Annie; his escape into the fictional territory he owns. Of course King’s author had to use a typewriter thirty years ago when ‘Misery’ was being written but I guess we can all escape down the ‘holes in our laptops’. That’s if the laptop doesn’t crack.
My laptop cracked this week in the middle of checking my final set of proofs for my poetry collection: ‘Red Lipstick & Revelations’. I was also collating memories from school friends as part of a tribute eulogy for one of peers, Caryl, whose memorial service is taking place on Lake Ontario tomorrow, Monday. So I had my own deadlines albeit not as deadly as King’s author’s deadline.
However, when I was waiting for Michael from Hazlemere Computers to turn up on Friday evening I felt about as powerless as King’s author: subject to the workings of Michael’s mind. Lucky for me, Michael’s problem solving capabilities are informed and logical, unlike Annie’s. When he emerged from my study on Friday evening with good news and the kind of smile that only plumbers or consultants exhibit on diagnosing a problem I felt my life was back on. My laptop is now uncracked.
I’m feeling pretty groggy today having finished King’s ‘Misery’ last night. Annie and her axe ground through my dreams. King’s author was terrorized into finishing his novel. There must be easier ways to write any ouevre. Try my Tuesday morning classes at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield beginning October 4th from 10. 00am until midday. (£170) There really is only one place left and three places left on the ‘Get that Book’ course, 4000 words assessment and a one hour and bit consultation. (£120) Email me.

Changing Places by Ms Paige Turner
I’ve just returned from my fourth Cruise and Maritime lecturing cruise around the northern part of the globe. It was my third trip on board Magellan. Usually they give me Shackleton which is a nice big room to lecture in. But on this last trip to the Norwegian Fjords they shifted me to Deck 8 which was a pretty exposed place to be. (It was inside so we didn’t freeze but discussing our life stories we felt well, just a little emotionally exposed.) We got shifted to this thoroughfare as there was a block booking for a group of craft ladies who swarmed upon Shackleton where they stored their silks and threads for the duration.
I guess we were doing the same thing on deck 8: unravelling the past, knitting our brows, chasing loose threads and all the while those royal fjords drifted by – or we did. It’s difficult on board to work out whose moving and who is at a standstill.
One thing I do hope is that the Fjords’ writers got changed a little bit by enrolling on Creative Writing at Sea; that they had a parallel journey and maybe stopped and had a think. I just hope they don’t wish they could have changed places with the crafty lot in Shackleton.
Jan’s feature ‘Changing for the Better’ is published in this month’s ‘Writing Magazine’. (September)
And there is still one place left on Creative Ink’s Tuesday morning ‘Get Inspired’ course at the Fitzwilliams Centre beginning October 4th. The theme is ‘Journey’. I wonder who will take that place?
Two places left on the ‘Get that Book’ course which you can begin now as it’s assessment and a one to one. Email me.