A Pig in a Poke – Blog 102 – Ms Paige Turner

I know I should perhaps be writing about turkeys buts pigs have come to mind. Whenever we trip aboard (and we have just returned from six weeks in Cape Town) I always award a ‘pig in the poke’ prize. What did I buy that was pretty useless?
This trip’s award goes to the Xhosa woman who sold me a comb to keep my hair up and in place. It cost 150 Rand and it’s pretty and it’s useless. When she demonstrated on me my hair was perfectly poised on the comb. I told her I wasn’t sure I could manipulate the comb in the same way that she did. “Sky. Turn. To the floor,” she said and added, “You’re not buying a face lift but a hair comb.” I was swept away. But in my undexterous hands and with my fine hair she might as well have sold it to a bald concert pianist. To touch on the Christmas theme I’m sure we will all get at least one ‘pig in the poke’ present so lovingly chosen and wrapped this season.
I have nothing against pigs. Quentin Crisp was awfully rude about pig farmers but I met a lovely pig farmer in Darling, near Cape Town. Her name was Ella-Marie and we met when she was at a performance given by the wonderful Pieter-Dirk Uys who does a drag act which amongst many other things satirizes South African politics. He used me as his running joke as I sat in the audience one matinee last month referring to me as his ‘little UK friend.” Pieter-Dirk is beautiful and so is Ella- Marie. Ella-Marie smoked like a man, had the skin of a Hollywood celeb and was left side of fluffy female with Pieter-Dirk right side of that coin to mix my metaphors. Pieter-Dirk kept his metaphors straight when he said that socialism was a case of ‘nothing’s right’ and capitalism was a case of ‘nothing’s left’.
I never ran across such an interesting two people in my life and living it to the full. Ella-Marie, wherever you are, I hope you got that pig farming managerial post in Darling. And Pieter-Dirk, thank you for all the work you do informing youngsters about HIV and for using me as the running joke in your matinee. Keep doing wonderful work with or without your wig.
Creative Ink Classes Spring Term 2015. Tuesdays/Get Inspired/Full. Three places left on the Thursdays ‘Get that Book Out of You’ starting Thursday 15th January at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield.
Merry Christmas and thanks also to the lovely Christmas Past, Present and Future workshoppers last Wednesday in Amersham, hosted by Catherine Klyhn and lectured by moi.
See my feature ‘Hidden Influence’ in this month’s Writing Magazine.

Last week’s intentional error – no leopard frogs only leopard toads.

A Wasp in Winter … Blog 101 – spot the deliberate error and Ms Paige Turner will email you a Christmas Present …

I have just left sunny Cape Town where the winds blow in different directions and blow the insects away south east to north west. I am barely one night’s sleep away from those noisy guinea fowl, shark sirens, helicopter fire rescuers and poisonous leopard frogs. Not one of them disturbed me. But what do I find in my freezing, December hallway in Beaconsfield where the naked Christmas tree needs erecting and dressing? I hear a wasp. Can you believe it? I think it got in when Mister Justin Case and I were trying to push his car uphill. The battery was flat. Ah, we are home.
At Creative Ink Tuesdays/Get Inspired class is now full. I have two places left on Thursday/Get that Book. If you would like a nice emailed gift token from me to a loved one for Christmas, or even someone you like but don’t love, then email me now.
Last Blog 100’s intentional error was the spelling of ‘Madiba’.

Blog 100 – BLOG 100 – On Fire in Cape Town.
Is late. Blog 100 is late. I’m half in holiday humour, six thousand miles from home but consider this also to be home. Our town Fish Hoek was on fire this last week. At dawn the guinea fowl are moving alarm clocks but on Thursday the helicopters flew above us instead to douse the mountain flames.
For those of you who know me as a playwright and director it will come as no surprise to you that before the showcasing of my play, ‘A President in Waiting …’ last week I was earnestly checking on props when the lovely and brave (because she directed my play) Amy Leigh Vermaak cried, “Jan, there’s a fire over yonder. PEOPLE ARE LOSING THEIR HOMES. We have the stamps.”
Stamps are vital to the story of the play as Khululwa (Khuls Nkatshu) was writing and sending a letter to Nelson Mandela. Khululwa didn’t have much luck. The posting was ill-timed and to boot, there’s a postal strike on here also. Khuls, the actress, didn’t need any luck. She was brilliant. We await the press reviews at time of writing.
The mountain is still on fire. It’s been burning for two days. So am I. I’m not sunburnt just pretty alight with the success of the play, now, no longer in waiting. Thank you, Rainbow Team: Amy (Afrikaaner), Khuls (Xhosa) and Earl/Producer (Cape Khaki).
Thank you Fish Hoek Scribblers for attendance and a great workshop last night as guinea pigs for my forthcoming Amersham one in December titled: The Unseen Character. See this December’s issue of ‘Writing Magazine’ if you would like a preview.
Shame Mandiba couldn’t have attended the play at the Desmond Tutu HIV Youth Foundation Centre last week. Sure he was there in spirit. He would have had to stand though. Rainbow audience.
One place left on Creative Ink for Writers’ ‘Get Inspired’ – Tuesday morning course. Five weeks from January 13th and a few more places on Thursday ‘Get that Book Out of You’ starting January 15th for five weeks at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield.

For ‘A President in Waiting’. Tech and DR tomorrow at the Desmond Tutu HIV Youth Foundation, Cape Town. Perfs – Friday 14th November at 3.00pm and 5.00pm. Directed by Amy Leigh Vermaak from the ALAS academy – with Khuls Nkatshu as Khululwa.

Blog 98 – Skinning Your Cat … by Ms Paige Turner

Gary used to come and decorate our house. He also came to my writing classes and played piano for many of our shows. I asked him if he would give my eight year old piano lessons. He paused with paintbrush in hand. Then he said, “Is she drawn to the piano?”
Miss Trial is married now. When she comes ‘home’ I’ve noticed that at some point, I hear the piano in my study being played. “Yes, Gary. Miss Trial is drawn to the piano.”
Are you drawn to writing or reading words? Because if you really are, then you will be skinning your cat in your own fashion. Last Thursday Amanda Hatter came to talk about her journey to publication with her children’s novel, Callum Fox and the Mousehole Ghost. Amanda told her story well. A number of top literary agents vied to represent her. There was talk of film rights. But after securing a top literary agent, it didn’t happen that way and so Amanda made sure it happened in her own fashion. She started her own publishing company and she’s sold hundreds of copies.
An hour before the talk a Creative Inker was reading in class. She said, “I’m not writing for publication. I’m writing so that someone close to me might read this story someday.”
I’m so pleased that so many former Creative Inkers are having success with agents and publishers or independently publishing. It’s what I thought, many years ago, I was starting out to do: write to be published. I still do. But I look now at what I really have been doing. I’ve been doing something whilst I was planning something else. I began teaching Creative Writing whilst I was writing for publication. And I have been published in all sorts of ways, skinning those cats. But I’ve never stopped teaching. And I’ve never stopped writing. I’m drawn to both.
Creative Ink Publishing had the joy of publishing Patricia Sentinella’s Dear John, Dear Anyone a couple of years back. I know Pat is drawn to words; drawn to finding the right word; drawn to the pleasure of the word on the page and on the tongue. When I was editing her words I could taste them.
If you aren’t drawn to something, don’t do it. Thanks, Gary, wherever you are. I hope your cat is happy.

Creative Ink Classes – Spring Term 2015 – Tuesdays – Get Inspired – Two places left
Thursdays – Get that Book Out of You – 10.00am until midday at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield.
Dear John, Dear Anyone by Patricia Sentinella/Creative Ink Publishing available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle.
Callum Fox and the Mousehole Ghost by Amanda Hatter available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle/Woodside White Publishing
Blackberry Promises/Creative Ink Publishing by Jan Moran Neil available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle
Serving Bluebird Pie/Creative Ink Publishing by Jan Moran Neil available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle.

Blog 97 – 10 Ways to Kick Start Your Writing Day …by Ms Paige Turner

This is the first of a four part series of features I have written for New London Writers.

You may be working on an autobiography, a novel, a script or collection of poetry and short stories. So these forty ‘kick start’ exercises are divided into:

a) Personal Experience – all about you.
b) Novel Ideas and Encouraging Dialogue – all about your fiction.
c) Firing the Mind: lateral thinking exercises for ways into poetry and short stories – all about new ideas.
d) Keeping the Policeman/woman outside of the Study – all about the editor inside of you. (He’s a friend but needs to know who is boss today.)

Make it only seven minutes worth of hors d’oeuvres writing if you are involved with an ongoing project. Time yourself and get back to your main oeuvre. Don’t judge. Just write. Keep the pen moving on the paper or keep the fingers typing. It’s important to keep the mind and hand (s) moving and not push The Muse too hard.

Your Personal Experience

1. You have a memory store: a landscape where your past history sits waiting for you to re-discover. Describe that memory store. Is it a memory box or a bag or a place? What colour is it? Is there a fragrance? What sounds can you hear and what is the texture of that store? Are there any tastes from your past you have forgotten and if so, why?
2. What is your earliest memory of reading? Who were you with? What were you doing? What were you feeling?
3. Repeat this exercise with your earliest memory of speaking.
4. And your earliest memory of writing? (Have you made any discoveries about how you react to the spoken or written word?)
5. At random, take a photo and an object which belong to you. Find a connection and write about it. A theme should emerge.
6. Take one of your past or present pets’ names as a Christian name and your mother’s maiden name as a surname and write a physical description of that person.
7. What were you doing five years ago?
8. Where do you want to be in five years time?
9. List the ten best moments of your life. Where were you and why were they so good?
10. List six turning points in your life. Where were you and what did they change about you?

You can catch the other three features on:
http://www.newlondonwriters.com

So check New London Writers out.

Blog 96 – A Cremation, A Christening and A Wedding … MS Paige Turner will be giving a free 1000 word assessment for the first person emailing with the correct answers. Read on …
A cremation, a christening and a wedding. All in one week. My white car was cremated. It would have been twenty years old this Christmas. I took my mother everywhere in it. Miss Trial grew up in it. The white Westie was delivered and despatched in it. I got a hundred quid for it just after I had put fifty quid’s worth of petrol in it. It was clunky and I know I lack adventure but I loved it and it has now gone to the Great Ford Factory in the Sky.
I have a new Mazda. I drove it very carefully down to the first Creative Ink class of the academic year. When I opened the boot with one of those keys that clicks doors open like magic I discovered that I had spilt a whole bottle of milk. Mister Justin Case was not happy. He arrived on the click to vacuum the new boot as he told me the smell of milk could permeate for the next twenty years. He also delivered a fresh bottle of milk. (The milk is for the free coffee writers get. Second cup is 20p.)
When I started my Masters in Creative Writing at Cambridge Mister Justin case checked out the fees and said, “How much??????” And then he asked me, “Wouldn’t you prefer a new car?”
“Oooh, no,” I said. “I’d much prefer two years of study and learning to get into all sorts of university research sites with lost ID numbers and passwords scatter gunned all over my creative notebooks. Think of all the new things I will learn.” But actually, actually, this new little Mazda is rather nifty and well christened with semi-skinned.
And then there was a Blackberry Wedding this week. Miss Jessberry www.spotlight.mts.co.uk got married to the lovely ruffle-headed Mister Cox. Lots of actors who had performed in ‘Blackberry Promises’ attended. ‘Blackberry Promises’ was my first play published by New Theatre Publications, performed on the London Fringe with the novel by the same name selling well on Amazon.
If anyone can email into this blog and say which part Jessberry played and what you think the colour of my new nifty Mazda is, then there’s a free assessment of 1000 words going.
So there we are. A Cremation, A Christening and A Wedding – all finished off with seeing Tennessee Williams’s ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ this week. I always feel like having a cool shower when I’ve seen one of his plays, don’t you?
• Submissions must be emailed within three months of prizewinning notification.

Blog 95 – A New Play – A President in Waiting … by Jan Moran Neil – awaits an audience …

The inspiration for my fifth play: A President in Waiting … came from watching Yael Farber and Thembi Mtshali’s A Woman in Waiting at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town last crisp September. The latter is a play which should be compulsory viewing for school learners and adults alike, not least because after the show two members of the audience engaged me in animated conversation in the Ladies about the subject matter. I was gone so long that Mister Justin Case almost sent out a search party. Farber and Mtshali’s one woman play re-visits the landscape of a Zulu woman’s childhood and her growing up in South Africa during apartheid. I wondered if I could write a sequel. If a young Xhosa woman could ask Madiba one question, what would that be?
I have to admit, I was looking for a vehicle for an exciting young actress who was an intern at the Desmond Tutu HIV Youth Centre Foundation in Masiphumelele, Fish Hoek. We both felt our bus had arrived. So, being a swallow, on my return to the UK, emails flew back and forth between Khuls Nkatshu and me with a script beginning to emerge. During the last, long, hot SA summer and our miserable, UK wet winter something of great momentum happened politically. If you come and see A President in Waiting … this November then you will see and hear how the events which unfolded during South Africa’s last summer had an impact on the one woman play I was writing.
I started a couple of rehearsals with Khuls on my trip to Cape Town last autumn but it became clear that in my swallow’s absence a director would be needed. As if transported By Magic Wand, Amy Leigh Vermaak who runs the ALAS academy in Fish Hoek www.alasacademy.co.za appeared with a request that I ‘surrender’ the script: something all scriptwriters should ultimately do.
With the help of Earl Mentor, Sport and Recreation Coordinator in a producing role at the Desmond Tutu Centre and gently guided by Dante Robbertze, Youth Centre Manager A President in Waiting … awaits performance and an audience. Please come and watch the next generation of black African women take the baton and the platform.
A President in Waiting … Performances: Friday 14th November at 3.00pm and 5.00pm. FREE ENTRY
Guinea Fowl Rd, Sunnydale,
Cape Town, 7975, South Africa
Tel: +27 21 785 4570
Cell: +27 82 740 4400
https://www.facebook.com/desmond.tutu.youth.centre
http://www.desmondtutuhivfoundation.org.za/page/oursites/

A President in Waiting …has been written as part of Jan Moran Neil’s Masters’ course in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. www.janmoranneil.co.uk
A FEW PLACES LEFT ON CREATIVE INK FOR WRITERS’ CLASSES BEGINNING TUESDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER (GET INSPIRED) FOR FIVE WEEKS AND THURSDAY 18TH SEPTEMBER (GET THAT BOOK OUT OF YOU) FOR FIVE WEEKS AT THE FITZWILLIAMS CENTRE, BEACONSFIELD. HP9 2JW. EMAIL ME FOR A SYLLABUS.

Blog 94 – Food for Thought and Three Apricots …

Miss Trial took me away to a health resort for a Mother and Daughter Bonding Weekend as a big birthday present. The resort mixed up our dates so could only offer us their suite. I have never in my life had so much joy telling hotel staff my room number. My first encounter was a Head in the Clouds treatment with a wonderful therapist. She had done a Masters in Public History and also worked as a copy editor. Our conversation is inspiring a poem. More on this another day but thank you, Lynnette.
Miss Trial and I spent the weekend in dressing gowns and sandalwood oil, finishing off with a Food Intolerance Test. Despite my tongue’s severe reaction to vinegar (it comes out in ulcers or maybe my spoken words are acidic) I came up trumps with only a slight reaction to strawberries and apricots. According to Mister Justin Case’s golfing buddy who is a retired chemist that’s down to histamine intolerance.
Well, I can live without strawberries. This is not a disaster. I can’t live without poetry, lipstick or my family. I’m a little bemused by the apricots though. I had three dried apricots at breakfast that morning. I haven’t eaten apricots in about fifteen years. Odd innit?

Last week’s blog – an unclaimed spotting of synaesthesia. ‘I saw you speaking’. It’s a mixture of the senses. That was Sight and Hearing. Try one for Taste and Smell.

• A few places left on Tuesdays – Get Inspired and Thursdays – Get that Book out of You – 10.00am until midday at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield, Five week courses beginning mid-September. Email me for a syllabus.

Blog 93 – Me, Jonathan Miller and the Victoria Line by Ms Paige Turner. Be the first to spot the synaesthesia and you will win an assessment of one of your poems – value: £10.

It’s a giveaway in the title: who I met on the Tube last week. He was sitting in the corner, inconspicuously reading a book. I was half way through writing a sonnet. I thought I recognised him. Maybe he was an ex-Creative Inker. He caught my eye and smiled. His face showed the landmarks of a friendly car tyre. I smiled and glanced away and glanced again. He looked up from his book and gave another short smile. I then knew it was The Doctor. His acknowledgment to me invited a response. Maybe he is inconspicuous on the Tube. So I said, “I saw you speaking about ballet at the Central School of Speech and Drama when I was nineteen.” I guess my facial landmarks indicated this was some time ago as he said he couldn’t recall.
I recall that lecture at the Embassy Theatre with clarity. Ballet has no words and life, Dr Jonathan Miller said in 1973, was a life of words. Actually, I feel ballet has a place, especially when you’ve sent 7000 words down the chute on a Masters’ assignment (see blog 83). However, I fell in love with Dr Jonathan Miller in the Embassy Theatre in 1973 and all over again on the Victoria Line as I have been totally in love with his voice and the Beyond the Fringe sketches. He told me he was directing Opera – and on the way to a rehearsal. I told him I was on the way to Croydon as my daughter was defending one of her biggest cases and over lunch Miss Trial said, “Oh, Mum you didn’t tell him you were doing a Masters at Cambridge, did you?” Of course and he had asked where I was staying and I told him it was a two year course, five residentials and quite a bit of online work and that I thanked him for our dialogue and that I would dine out on it.
Miss Trial whipped out her encyclopedic mobile and discovered that Sir Jonathan Miller was twenty years older than me to the day and that he is an alumni of her college. Information is fast. Then later on this clammy City day, dining out with her and son-in-law Master Mind, back at Victoria, I re-told the story of me, Jonathan Miller and the Victoria Line. Master Mind said, “Where did you get on?”
“Oxford Circus,” I said.
“Two stops to Victoria,” Master Mind replied. “Quick chat.” He’s quick.
“Oh, Master Mind,” I said. “Never mind the width, feel the quality.”

• A few places left on Tuesdays – Get Inspired and Thursdays – Get that Book out of You – 10.00am until midday at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield, Five week courses beginning mid-September. Email me for a syllabus.
*No-one spotted the intentional error on last week’s ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ and not as I wrote, ‘The Fault is in Our Stars’.
• Prizes must be taken up within six months.