Raffaella Barker - Blog

Creative Writing Workshops

info@tomgirling.co.uk (Administrator) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 10:43:12 +0000

I am running monthly creative writing workshops that will take place in Cley, North Norfolk.

Dates as follows, October 11th and November 8th.

There will also a workshop for teenagers at half term on Friday 28th October.

See the attached flyer for more details...

Spring Cleaning

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:03:50 +0000

Blog has been gathering dust for a while but now its time to spring clean it. Spring cleaning is the old fashioned version of make over.In the days when our mothers and grandmothers used to spring clean, our personal version would not have involved nipping and tucking our faces in a gruesome and ultimately misguided attempt to look young, rather we would sew a few new buttons onto our clothes. Where now people throw out all their old furniture and fill their houses with vibrating leather sofas ( a special section of the furniture world dear to my heart as you will see from a previous blog), or buy a television as big as the wall, they used to wash the curtains, move the furniture and get busy with the carpet sweeper. The carpet sweeper! I think it should be brought back and heralded as the eco tool for the future. I wonder if James Dyson has one in the offing.

Rubbing up against some saints..........

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:27:46 +0000

I am not sure why, and I fear it is related to getting older, but I have begun to look at churches with deepening fascination. Just before Christmas I was in St Paul's Cathedral to hear my godson sing Evensong with the Worcester College choir. This was one of my finest moments as a godmother, sitting in the candle lit evening, absorbing the monumental space that is St Paul's, listening to the silence and the singing. My godson is a probationer and looked like a tiny candle, his face vivid, above his gown, concentration profound as he sang angelically in the choir stalls.

Walking out afterwards, craning at the dome, the glitter of gold leaf from hundreds of feet above us was astonishing and exotic, and in its utter magnificence it reminded me of Christmas a few years previously when we were in Venice and went to the Basilica in St Mark's Square for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and also of a service I attended at Westminster Abbey for Sir John Betjeman who has a stone of commemoration in Poet's Corner there . These occasions stand out for me as I was lucky enough to experience these vast Cathedrals as part of the congregation rather than as a shuffling tourist.

Hurray its Christmas.........almost

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:04:31 +0000

This time of year is the most demented of all and I have been full of Christmas spirit for the most ridiculous amount of time already, and have been having to fuel it with little more than the odd mince pie and a lot of sniffing of tangerines while waiting for the actual day to dawn.

I am not sure what it is about this Christmas that has got me so excited, though there are some vital components, most central of which is the new sofa from DFS which arrived yesterday and upon which I am nestling to write. I like to think that, thanks to the sleekness of the Loft sofa, combined with glamorous red and white striped cushions from Cabbages and Roses, the drawing room of our small 1930s house is now a hymn to gracious living. It truly would be had the NOTORIOUS P U G not just charged in like a miniature bull running in the streets of Pamplona and launched himself and his mud ridden paws all over the pale beauty of the Loft.

A blog to get everyone in the mood...

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:01:18 +0000

Just winding down my brain after the Graceland quiz last night... Set by the pulchritudinous Liza Campbell, it was an opportunity for formalised humiliation unequalled since school. My only hope was that because she and I share the delectable Studio 69 at Great Western Studios, some of my mumblings would have come through and some of her questions might have been lying about in our mess as we moved studios and so I would have known a few answers. Huh.

How it all goes wrong sometimes...

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:18:12 +0000

The watershed came a week ago on Friday. Or the dam burst, or any wet analogy involving chaos but also change. Whatever. On Friday I realised I had to start my book all over again. I have been writing it since April. I did a lot of cursing, a bit of weeping, foot stamping and gnashing of terrible teeth like the Wild Things (I wonder what the movie will be like Where the wild things are) and took to my bed in the manner of Barbara Cartland. She wrote her books from a pink powder puff boudoir, or dictated them, but she was definitely in bed. I too was definitely in bed as I began to write the book again. Hey ho, the only way out of the hole is to write myself a ladder up to the top and to climb out and get back on my feet.

Stage Fright

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:57:01 +0000

We celebrated First Story with a gala evening at Holland Park school. Four of the children who were involved in producing anthologies last year read. To my immense pride Edward, my protégé was among the four; his laid back ease on stage, and his heartfelt, honest story made me proud and also sad that his parents couldn’t be there and nor was anyone from the school present. He was among his peers, many of whom he had met and befriended on the Arvon Course which was his prize from First Story as one of the most promising voices in my writing group, but he was not witnessed by anyone from his own life, and that was a real shame.

Heavy Metal week in the kitchen

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:05:32 +0000

This is a last ditch procrastination moment – Friday afternoon in the studio, the sun is shining hard, the purple Indian bedspread that is my curtain is casting dappled shade, and I have the horrible spectre of a printer at home that I haven’t connected to my computer.

Mission of the month has been buying and setting it up – and the buying was painful enough – down in the darker reaches of PC world where all the computer equipment looked like bigger or smaller toasters and it was hard to get excited about making one my own.

Summer jam and wasps

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:16:04 +0000

Drinking tea and eating chocolate biscuits on the shingle as the sun went down on the Norfolk coast last week I was hard pushed to believe the summer was all over. Now I am in my miniscule studio over looking 8 lines of train track and wedged between Paddington station and the West Way and I am so glad of the memories.

Blue Plaques and the stories behind them

tom@tomgirling.co.uk (Raffaella) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:52:29 +0000

This weeks blog is especially designed to add to your knowledge bank………its about blue plaques…