Rachel Cotterill

Greenlandic Fields

2010-07-30T16:00:00.016+01:00

You can't take fields for granted in Greenland. Indeed, in much of the country there simply aren't any, but near Narsaq (in the south) there's a growing business of sheep-farming.

Mostly the sheep roam happily in the hills, grazing as they go, but there are a small number of fields where hay is grown for winter feed. Cultivated land is so rare and precious that you're not allowed to walk across it lest you do some accidental damage: to this end, the fields are clearly marked on walking maps of the area.

But it's not like you could miss them - against the harsh greys of the surrounding landscape, these are fields of the most vivid green I've ever seen. These rare oases look lush and beautiful... I can only imagine how much work it is to keep them that way!

Kayaking

2010-07-28T16:00:00.048+01:00

I suppose this comes back to my growing obsession with messing about in boats: I've always loved the water, but aside from one teenage attempt at dragon boat racing, I haven't had much boating experience. I learnt to sail last year, and loved it, but (being me...) I'm always looking for new experiences.

We saw some traditional kayaks being built in Greenland, and met some people who had just got back from a kayaking-camping trip. It looked fun. I happen to have a couple of friends who go paddling regularly, so when they had a day off work and the chance came up, I naturally jumped at the opportunity to join them and learn something new.

Getting in to the boat was quite possibly the hardest part, and the point where I felt I was most at risk of ending up in the water. Once you're settled inside the kayak, it's surprisingly stable, especially since we went out on a canal, on a calm day - we just had to pay a little more attention when a narrowboat came past.

For the first few minutes, I found I could steer to the left but not to the right - meaning I ended up doing several 360-degree turns just to get back on a straight line. The funny thing was, even though I was clearly a pathetic excuse for a kayaker, it was really fun. Being hopeless at something isn't usually quite so enjoyable!

By the end of a couple of hours - including a short ball game, which caused Andy to capsize in an overenthusiastic attempt to win - I was starting to feel I was getting the hang of it. I could certainly see some improvement - even if I won't be looking for white water any time soon! Now, I just have to resist the urge to buy a kayak (along with resisting the urge to buy a sailing boat, which also requires a lot of willpower).

Rum (& Potato!) Truffles

2010-07-26T16:00:00.041+01:00

Given the addiction my husband and I have to chocolate, it may not be a surprise that we needed to find a way to feed our habit while on holiday. One ubiquitous product in both Danish and Greenlandic bakeries was the rum truffle.

They had a slightly different texture to the ganache- or cake-based truffles I've made before, which was a mystery until someone mentioned that Danish baking often includes potato.

A couple of weeks later, in an English book shop, I was flicking through a book of potato recipes and found a recipe for rum truffles, made from mashed potato. Putting two and two together, I decided to have a go. This is a variant on that recipe.

The bakery versions tended to be huge (in which case this recipe would make about four!) but I usually prefer to have a smaller treat.

Rum Truffles
Makes about 16

one medium (4oz/100g) potato
8oz/200g dark chocolate
8oz/200g icing sugar
2tbsp dark rum
sugar sprinkles to decorate

Peel and chop the potato, and steam or boil until cooked through.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate (I have a special chocolate-melting machine, but a small bowl over a pan of boiling water will do fine).
Mash the potato in a mixing bowl, then mix in the melted chocolate. Add the rum, and stir until combined.
Add the icing sugar, a little at a time, and gradually combine into the potato/chocolate mixture. It will still be quite wet at this stage.
Put the bowl in the fridge for half an hour.
When you take it out again, it should have firmed up. Give it a stir to soften it up again.
Roll into small balls using your fingertips (the warmth of your hands will soften the mixture again, to make nice round shapes).
Roll the truffles in sugar sprinkles, and arrange on a plate. Chill in the fridge for a few minutes more before eating.

Greenlandic National Day, Part 2

2010-07-24T16:00:00.053+01:00

If you haven't read Part 1, go ahead, I'll wait...

There's a tradition in Greenland called kaffimik - whenever you have something to celebrate, you put flags outside your house to signal that there's a kaffimik at your house, and anyone passing is welcomed in for coffee and cake. It's a communal celebration that's perfectly suited to the typically small settlements of Greenland.

To continue the National Day celebrations, the Nuuk administration had arranged a giant kaffimik for the whole city. This was going to be outside in the street, but although they set up the tables first thing in the morning, the rain won out and the whole affair was moved indoors, into a giant sports hall.

Despite the huge numbers of coffee pots, it was hard to find one that wasn't empty! However, with Andy's hawk-eyes looking out for refills, we did eventually manage to score our free cuppa, and a slice of Greenlandic cake (which is where I got the idea to make my own).

Most of the day's celebratory activities were also moved inside the hall. One of the things I'd been looking forwards to the most was the "Greenlandic polka" demonstration - a bouncy style of dancing which turned out to have a lot in common with various European folk and circle dances. It was fun to watch and challenging to photograph!

You may have gathered that Nuuk wasn't my favourite place in Greenland, but they certainly put on a good display in honour of Greenland's semi-independence day, and we were glad we'd arranged our trip around this date.

Greenlandic National Day, Part 1

2010-07-22T16:00:00.065+01:00

We didn't have particularly concrete plans for most of our time in Greenland; we booked arrivals and departures with very little thought of what we'd actually do in between. However, the one aspect of the timing which we did plan carefully was to make sure we were in Nuuk (Greenland's capital) for the National Day celebrations on June 21.

We found a schedule in the tourist office: the day was kicking off with a procession through the streets at 7.30am. The starting point was an hour's walk from where we were staying. Have I mentioned lately that I'm not a morning person...? I'm really not. But I'm even less of a person-who-misses-the- National-Day-procession-just-because-she's-sleepy, so I got up absurdly early and off we went into the grey Greenlandic morning.

In keeping with the tiny size of the city, it was a tiny procession. When we set off from the town hall there was hardly anyone there who wasn't carrying a flag or playing in the marching band, and though we picked up a few more en route, it was a small enough affair for us to feel we were really part of the action.

Don't you just love the colourful beaded designs of the women's costumes?

We processed to the Colonial Harbour (the heart of the old town) where we were due to have a canon salute, speeches, and singing. Each canon blast made me jump out of my skin even though I was supposed to be expecting it - goodness, they're loud.

As we'd arrived, sheets of paper were given out with the lyrics to the National Anthem (in Greenlandic, of course). The choir's conductor was an enthusiastic and energetic man, and when he encouraged the audience to join in with the singing, we felt we really ought to give it a go. Thankfully, Greenlandic is written pretty much as it's pronounced - but I have no idea what we were singing about.

Then, while the Greenlanders filled the cathedral for a two-hour service (everything takes a while, since it has to be in Greenlandic and Danish), we went back to bed for a little nap.

Come back on Saturday for Part 2

Look Ma, No Kit!

2010-07-20T16:00:00.044+01:00

I've mentioned before the problem with vague goals, and knowing when you've achieved them. I put "learn embroidery" on my Before 30 list without really thinking about how I'd know when I got there, but after a little more thought, I decided that for my purposes a reasonable definition of success would be to complete a non-trivial project of my own design. Once I've done that, I feel I can look the world in the eye and say that, from a baseline of nothing, I've made progress. Think of it as the embroidery equivalent of "learning to knit" by making a scarf.

Having decided that this is what I need to do, the next step, of course, was to decide on a project. I have loads of ideas in the back of my mind, mostly held up by my limited ability to draw the designs in the first place. But one day I realised that my jewellery representation of my travels is breaking down as I visit more obscure countries for which charm-bracelet flags aren't produced, and I decided to have a go at embroidering a set of flags for the countries I've visited.

Of course, some flags are inherently easier than others. I'm going to start with the easy ones - but I know that I have Mongolia, Cuba, and Canada waiting for me a little further down the line...

I started off with the idea that I might do each flag seperately, and then sew them on to something, but after making a couple it became clear that it would be hard to get them lined up neatly.

I decided to treat those as practice, and start again with a single, larger piece. Here's the first stage of planning, with some of the easier flags drawn in:

So here I am - trying to sew something without a kit, and without pages of notes to tell me what I should be doing next. This is, in some sense, my personal "exam piece" - if I complete it and am satisfied with the result, then I'm happy to tick off "learning embroidery" as successfully complete, even though I know in my heart that I may never stop learning more about embroidery. (And who knows, maybe eventually I'll learn enough to be able to give myself more specific goals in later years...) The only question now is, can I sew faster than I can travel...?

Little Big City

2010-07-18T16:00:00.084+01:00

Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, has about 15,000 inhabitants. By British standards that's a small town, but in Greenlandic terms, it's a metropolis.

This is a prime example of the folly of overlaying one's own assumptions onto a very different world. I assumed it would be a sweet little town, maybe with a few extra administrative buildings for its capital function - and instead, what I found was recognisably a city, albeit on a smaller scale.

Nuuk (originally called Godthåb) was essentially created by Danish missionaries, and a statue of Hans Egede - the man who brought Christianity to Greenland - dominates the older part of the city.

Later Danish colonists were instrumental in the growth of the city, encouraging (sometimes forcibly) the inuit populations of nearby settlements to move into the new tower blocks in town. Some of these older blocks are due to be pulled down shortly - but so far as I can tell, new building is also following in a similar style. And in contrast to the primarily outdoors life we observed in the other towns we visited, in Nuuk everything was locked away behind closed doors.

As Greenland moves from a subsistence economy into the modern age, more and more people are abandoning the smaller settlements and moving into the towns to find work. You can hardly blame them when life as a subsistence hunter has historically involved regular periods of starvation, and a life expectancy for men which hovers around 66 years even now.
Thanks to this population expansion, Nuuk has filled the little peninsula on which it was established. The building of suburbs is progressing at such a rate that the local hiking map, published in 2005, is so far out of date as to be virtually useless. It may be a small city but it is, unmistakably, a city.

Does anyone know of a smaller place that still has a "big city" feel?

Graduation! (not mine)

2010-07-16T16:00:00.080+01:00

A brief interlude in our tales from Greenland. Today, I want to talk about my mum, because it's her graduation.

My mum didn't go to university when she finished school. The years passed, and I can only wonder how often she thought about going back to her studies. Three years ago, she finally left her job and enrolled as an undergraduate student of English Literature and Creative Writing.

It's hard work going back to uni when you've had a substantial period away from that kind of work. You have to re-learn some of your study skills and hone your essay writing. But my mum is a natural student, and an excellent writer, and she was determined to do well. In fact, she was determined to get a first class degree, which would secure her funding for postgraduate study.

I hope she won't mind my sharing one little story. A few weeks ago, after her last exam, my mum phoned me up sounding uncharacteristically dejected. The exam had gone badly - a lot of the things she'd planned to say had never made it from the pen onto the page. I'm sure everyone who's ever taken an exam knows that feeling. She was disappointed in herself, and ready to give up on her dreams of PhD study. I took a deep breath, wondered if I should be offering only sympathy, but instead told her in no uncertain terms to stop being so hard on herself. University exams, I promised, are not marked as strictly as essays written at home. Tutors know that there's a limit on how much you can write in the time limit. I'd already calculated how close she was to a first, based on the marks from previous modules, and it was too close to even contemplate giving up.

I was right.

So as my mum takes to the stage today to collect her first class degree certificate, I hope she knows she has the world's proudest daughter.

And mum...? I told you so.

Some of you already know that my mum is a blogger, too - she writes about her studies and writing, vegan cookery, crafts, gardening, house renovations... all sorts of interesting snippets. I'm sure she would love it if you dropped by to offer your congratulations.

The Midnight Sun

2010-07-14T16:00:00.018+01:00

We'd had a grey - if enjoyable - day watching ice falling into the sea. It was late, we were tired... but then we looked out of the window and noticed the world was glowing.

Seriously. Glowing.

I yawned, stretched, and suggested - since it was ten to twelve - that we should go out for a walk and experience the honest-to-God midnight sun. And I'm so glad we did, because it was the best light we had on the whole holiday.

To prove just how amazing it was, I've taken these photos straight from the camera - for this entire post I've done no editing, not even the smallest of tweaks.

Even the puppies looked more sweet under the glow of the midnight sun.

And because I'm a child at heart, it was fun to play with the super-long shadows to generate an unusual self-portrait.

Ice!

2010-07-12T16:00:00.056+01:00

How have I managed to give you three posts about Greenland (not even counting the one about Greenlandic cake!) while barely mentioning the ice?

The Greenlandic icecap dominates the map, but when you're on the coast (as all the settlements are), you can't usually see it. There are mountains in the way.

Still, there was plenty of ice in Ilulissat. We even camped for a couple of nights within sight of the world-famous icefjord.

It's hard to overstate how impressive the icefjord is. It's 55km long, about 8km wide, and is basically a mass of icebergs frozen together. I wish it was safe to hike on it!

I also learned a little more of what it means to be a UNESCO World Heritage site. I'd always imagined it to be an international version of the "Listed Building" status we have in the UK, where there are legal protections to stop the owner from making certain types of changes without permission. Not quite. Ilulissat Icefjord is registered as a World Heritage site, and that does come with certain conditions attached, but what surprised me was the option to opt out at any time. Surely if we want to protect the heritage of the world, local administrations shouldn't be able to just change their minds? Although I suppose it would be hard to enforce any other way.

We also took a day-trip by boat to Eqip glacier - an actively calving glacier where you can watch big chunks of ice falling into the sea. It was an impressive, looming wall of ice.

If you look closely, you can see the clouds of ice dust... it's hard to photograph, but it was fun to watch.

The Dog Lands (featuring mini huskies!)

2010-07-10T16:00:00.029+01:00

Ilulissat (where we saw the polar bear skin) was the first stop on our tour of Greenland; it's a small town of around 4,000 people, and almost as many dogs. There used to be more - twice as many, a decade ago.

These aren't house pets, like the dogs we see in England. Every one of them is a working animal (or, in the case of the puppies, destined to become one). Indeed, if you have a pet dog then you wouldn't be allowed to take him above the Arctic Circle in Greenland - so as not to interfere with the purity of the native husky population, no other species is allowed. And likewise, if a husky travels south of the Arctic Circle, he isn't allowed to return.

That's not the only law relating to these dogs. It's also a legal requirement that dogs older than five months be chained. The town provides anchoring points for the chains.

This results in large areas of land where dogs live - and humans don't. There are sheds and kennels, water butts and sledges... but mostly, there are dogs. Sometimes howling or snarling, usually sleeping because the summer sun means it's really too hot for their thick coats. When we took paths which cut across the dog lands, we felt strangely out of place.

And, at this time of year, there are puppies. Miniatures; tiny, fully-working models of husky sled dogs.

Andrew has a way with animals - they all just love him, and these pups were no exception. Every time we passed a new husky family, the babies would come and gather round his feet.

Which was great for us, but often left the mother dog feeling a little confused as to why her babies had abandoned her. One mother in particular was extremely perturbed, and continued to whine at us for the whole time we were there. Since she was chained up, some metres away, that was all she could do to tell us - and her puppies - that she was unhappy.

As you can probably guess, we spent a lot of time photographing the puppies at play. Unlike the adults (who were suffering in the heat), the babies were energetic and enthusiastic in their play-fighting. I could have watched them for hours.

I feel sad to think that in a few months, they'll all be chained alongside their older relatives. I bet they can't wait for the relative freedom of winter, when they at least get to run, even if there is a sled to pull.

The Defining Moment...

2010-07-08T16:00:00.031+01:00

... when I knew I wasn't at home any more.

... when I knew things were different here.

... when I grabbed hold of my husband and muttered something incoherent about this being real.

In a perfectly normal Ilulissat back yard, right next to the washing line... a complete polar bear skin is stretched out to dry.

Of everything I saw in Greenland, in the few days before and the subsequent weeks after this moment, this image has stuck in my head the most clearly. It's the first photo I hunted out when we got home. In many ways, this is the image that defines my experiences: modern houses intertwined with ancient (and alien) traditions. Whatever else I show you over the next couple of weeks, remember this. Greenland may be changing quickly at the moment, but it has by no means lost touch with its Inuit roots.

Before I'm 30 (Update 1)

2010-07-06T16:00:00.024+01:00

In January, I laid out a list of things I'd like to achieve before I turn 30 - giving myself three years, at the time. Today marks six months on from there, and consequently one-sixth of the way through (in time if not in progress...), so this is a quick update on where I'm up to.

But before I get on to listing and box-ticking, I'd like to say a little bit more about my motivation.

I made this list because goals and deadlines keep me productive; that's just the way my brain works. I chose things to include based on areas where I wanted to push myself, things I wanted to start (or finish) sooner rather than later, and one or two places where I felt I could use a little extra encouragement.

There's no place in this process for quick wins, or cheating, or shortcuts... I only wrote down things that I really, really want to do. And if I want to do something, I want to do properly. That might mean I miss some goals simply because I haven't finished to my satisfaction within three years. That's okay. I expect there to be other lists for other periods of time.

Enough of me rambling, then. Let's see where we're up to, with green for finished items and pink for progress since January.

	Starting Point (6 Jan 2010)	Progress (6 July 2010)
Academic
Complete my PhD	Just about to complete my 'transfer'	Transferred to full PhD status on January 21st
Publish in an academic journal	Not started
Present at a conference	One unsuccessful submission in 2009
Home
Install a woodburning stove	Not started	Disconnected the broken gas fire which was in the fireplace we want to use.
Move the stairs	Not started	Got a quote.
Install solar water heating	Not started
Build raised vegetable beds	Not started
Travel
Go to Greenland	Booked for summer 2010	Just got back!
Visit the southern hemisphere	Probably New Zealand in 2011
Have visited 30 countries	Currently 20	Up to 22: added the Faroes and Greenland
Writing & Speaking
Have a novel published	About to start sending out queries (wish me luck!)
Finish the Charanthe series	Volume 1 (of 3) complete in draft	Finished editing Vol 1, and written some of Vol 2
Finish writing one standalone novel	Odd first-drafts lying around
Record and podcast an audiobook	Not started	Done some test recordings
Have articles printed in 10 different publications	1/10 so far	Sent out a few queries (ignored)
Average 5,000 hits a month on my blog	Currently ~1,500	Over the past six months the average is ~2,200
Get a slot on the local radio station	Training course starting soon	Took a short course in radio production and broadcasting
Take at least 5 public speaking engagements	Not started	Found a couple of leads for possible bookings
Crafts & Skills
Hand-knit a jumper or cardigan for myself	Not started	Knit myself a cardigan
Learn embroidery	Not started	Started learning
Learn 10 new juggling tricks	Not started
Use manual camera settings most of the time	Currently rather erratic
Get my Guiding warrant	At the beginning of the process	Around 1/4 done
Develop a board game	A few ideas floating around	Made an initial prototype (lots of work still to do!)
Make all my own Christmas cards	About half were hand-made in 2009

So out of 25 goals, that's two completed, with measurable progress against a further thirteen. The next full update will be on my 28th birthday...

Kalaallit Kaagiat

2010-07-04T16:00:00.011+01:00

Since we didn't really fancy trying mattak (raw whale skin and blubber), we decided to stick to cake for our experience of authentic Greenlandic cuisine.

Most of Greenland's baked goods are obviously imported directly from Denmark - but this recipe, whose name translates approximately as "Greenlandic cake," seems to be about as close to a national dish as you can get. We discovered it at Greenland's national day celebrations in Nuuk, where it was served (for free, along with free coffee) as part of city-wide celebrations. Kaffimik is probably my favourite Greenlandic tradition - free coffee and cake for everyone, any time you have something to celebrate. Definitely an idea I'll be stealing!

It's half-cake, half-bread; sweet enough to enjoy as a teatime snack, yet substantial enough to eat for lunch (without feeling too naughty - after all, it has fruit!).

I found a small number of different recipes for this cake, all in Danish - this is an approximation of two different recipes, in my own translation, and works out incredibly simple to make. The optional topping is not listed in any recipes I've seen, but is my attempt to recreate what we ate in Nuuk.

Kalaallit Kaagiat

100g sugar
100g raisins
100g butter
¼ litre boiling water
20g dried yeast
500g flour
1tbsp milk

Optional topping
2tbsp icing sugar
1tsp ground cardamom

Add the sugar, raisins, butter, and boiling water to a large bowl. Combine, and stir occasionally until the butter has all melted.
Meanwhile, dissolve the yeast in a small amount of lukewarm water.
Add the yeast and flour to the raisin mixture, and combine thoroughly.
Set aside to stand for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 200°C, and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
Knock back the dough, knead for a couple of minutes (this will be a sticky job, because it's a very wet mixture), then arrange the dough in the middle of the baking sheet.
Leave the loaf to rise in a warm place for 10-15 minutes, brush the top with milk, then bake for 35 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool before serving.
(optional, if you want to serve as "cake") Mix cardamom powder into icing sugar, and dust onto the top of the cake after cooling.

Blog Inspiration: July

2010-07-02T16:00:00.017+01:00

The new theme for today is Style, which is deliberately open to a broad interpretation - I'm in love with a number of blogs which each deal with different aspects of making the world just that little bit more beautiful.

Kate started her Wishing True blog as a place to highlight all the beautiful things she dreams of owning - and after reading her blog I want half of them, too!
MJ is an Oxford geology student who blogs about fashion and her personal style at dreaming spires and old car tyres. She's off on a field trip at the moment, but please go and visit her so she'll get a nice surprise when she gets back.
Carole, aka Mademoiselle Poirot, is a French lady currently living in London, whose blog is bursting with charming interiors, furniture, and accessories. One day I'll get to visit her stall at Greenwich market.

Recipients are welcome to display the badge (right-click to download the image), and to pass it on if they wish; the only condition is to let me know if you decide to pass it along so that I can check out your recommendations.

If you want to let me know about passing along a badge, you can do that at the main Blog Inspiration page.

Sounds of Ilulissat

2010-06-30T16:00:00.063+01:00

I've just got home from Greenland.

There will be photos soon, I promise - we took more photos than you could ever have time to look at, so it will take me a while to pick out the best ones. But much of what really stands out in my memory isn't visual but aural, particularly in Ilulissat, the first town where we stayed.

A loud crack, sounding like a gunshot, made me jump the first time I heard it. Hunters in Greenland do shoot, and oh, it sounded close. My heart started beating just a little bit faster.

Remember we were sleeping under canvas much of the time; sounds reached us loudly and clearly.

It wasn't long before I realised what I was hearing: not a gun, but the cracking of ice. Even a small piece of ice falling onto the frozen surface of the icefiord would create a significant noise, amplified as it echoed in the mountains. Icebergs turning in the sea made a similar sound. Hundreds of miles above the arctic circle, this became a constant soundtrack to our lives.

I was also haunted by the howling of Ilulissat's 3,500 sled dogs - who deserve a post all to themselves, especially the adorable puppy-huskies. In the summer heat (yes, it was hot some days) they were clearly uncomfortable and sleepy, feeling out of place, longing for the snow.

Finally (for now) a man-made kind of sound: apparently, headphones haven't reached Greenland, or are certainly not popular. Day or night, you would often come upon someone with an MP3 player or stereo playing - quietly but clearly - in the street. And on the bus. And in the ferry. Private music seems not to be a concept; if you're listening, you share. Just one modern-day example of the communality of Inuit culture, which I've read so much about lately.

Indestructible Nails

2010-06-28T16:00:00.002+01:00

I imagine quite a few of my readers are girls like me (men can probably skip this post, unless you're shopping for presents!). Girls who want to look nice, but who have hectic and wonderful lives, and can't afford to put their appearance at the top of their priority lists each day.

Chipped nails don't look nice. The inherent chippy-ness of nail polish (and how scruffy it looks with even a single chip) is why I typically don't bother to paint my nails. I don't want to have to carry extra stuff around with me for 'emergency' repairs. So in general, although I'd love to have brightly-coloured nails all year round, I save it up for parties and special occasions.

Then a few weeks ago I treated myself to my first professional manicure and pedicure. I came away with striking pink nails, but I'd already resigned myself to the fact that it would probably only last for a day or two.

Actually, it lasted nearly three weeks (four, on my toes).

Whether I was typing (one of the most chip-inducing activities, in my experience) or knitting, cooking or climbing mountains, nothing seemed to damage it. And when it did eventually start to chip away at the edges, I got my nail polish remove it came off like a dream, with much less mess than other brands I've used.

The brand is OPI. They have an amazing website if you want to see all the available colours (click through to the "Try It On" studio, where you can adjust a virtual hand to match your skin tone). It's a lot more expensive than high street brands, but considering that most nail polish lasts about two days on me, the extra expense is more than justified by the extended lifetime. Plus, the colours are simply gorgeous.

Disclosure: OPI didn't approach me, it just happens to be the brand my manicurist used. And now I'm addicted!

I've just returned from an amazing holiday in Greenland! I'm catching up on comments as fast as I can, and will come round and visit you all soon.

Organization

2010-06-26T16:00:00.001+01:00

Apparently, if you ask my friends, I come across as quite well-organized. I don't feel organized! I feel like someone who clings to some semblance of organization by writing everything down and making a lot of lists. But I've always had a problem with loose pieces of paper - often post-it notes - and no sensible filing system. Sticking them into my Filofax, or a small box with no other purpose, seemed for a while to do the trick, but all it actually did was to hide the information. Any time I needed to find something again, I had to search for it.

I've long wished for an electronic solution to the 'notebook' problem - somewhere to store drafts and scribblings until they prove they're worthy of a proper home. But nothing seemed to be working for me, and I just ended up with a proliferation of poorly-structured 'notes' files on my computer, as well as stacks of hand-scribbled notes. Then a friend told me about TiddlyWiki (see http://www.tiddlywiki.com), a single file that acts like a wiki site.

The TiddlyWiki format has a number of advantages that appeal to me. It behaves a bit like a wiki to edit and to read: you can make individual 'Tiddlers' (like an article/page on Wikipedia) and link them together however you choose using user-friendly wiki syntax. This allows me to structure my data in whatever way seems most intuitive, hopefully helping me to find it again. But it's all stored in a single HTML file, making it easy to use (just open the file in any browser, no setup or installation required) and, importantly, very quick and straightforward to back-up (since there's only one file to copy across).

Of course it's not perfect. If I'm out of the house without my laptop, I still have to scribble on post-it notes, or save notes on my phone, or write on the back of my hand. But at least now I have a place to copy all that information to, once I get back to the computer.

How do you keep yourself organised? Do you, like me, find that you have to write things down regularly to stop your head exploding?

I'm in Greenland! I promise to catch up on comments, and come round and visit you all, just as soon as I get home. I'll try to keep in touch via Twitter and my Facebook page.

Familiarity vs Fear

2010-06-24T16:00:00.001+01:00

On our recent trip to the Faroes, as we crossed London by tube to get to the airport, it suddenly occurred to me that this was probably the point when we were at most risk from thieves. After all, the Faroes has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Not quite the big city...
Torshavn, capital of the Faroes

London is familiar. I feel pretty comfortable there, but I sometimes wonder whether that familiarity makes me overlook the little dangers in a way I never would if I was in a city I didn't know so well. Am I lulled into a false sense of security, or am I genuinely better at judging the threats around me in a place I know well? I have no idea of the answer.

There's definitely some level of safe-feeling which comes from familiarity, but there are other (more rational) factors in play when I suddenly start wearing a money belt overseas.

It matters less if I'm a victim of theft in my own country: I don't carry much cash, my cards are easily cancelled, and documents can be quickly replaced. The police are also familiar to me, they speak my language, and I theirs (at least, I know how to get a crime reference number!). Most importantly, I worry about my passport when I'm in a foreign country, because without it I can't get home.

Proof that it's all subjective: at the airport waiting to fly home from Colorado last summer, I overheard some American travellers discussing the extra precautions they were taking for their trip to England - just as I was about to relax my security from "holiday mode" back to normal.

Do you take more care when you're somewhere unfamiliar? Even when it's completely irrational...? All your thoughts are welcome, of course, but I'd be particularly interested in the views of natural city-dwellers (just because I'm really not one!)

I'm in Greenland! I promise to catch up on comments, and come round and visit you all, just as soon as I get home. I'll try to keep in touch via Twitter and my Facebook page.

A Story About Stories

2010-06-22T16:00:00.001+01:00

If you've been blogging for any length of time, you probably have "blog friends" - people you've never met, but who you know you'd be able to talk with for hours, if you ever end up in the same city/continent/hemisphere. Bells is one of those people - she lives in Australia, so I have no idea whether I ever will meet her, but I hope so one day. Today, she's kindly provided me out with a very touching post about her development as an aspiring writer.

A Story About Stories
by Bells of Bellsknits

I think I have wanted to be a writer all my life. I know I took writing stories pretty seriously as a child and was often praised for the results by my teachers. I loved the praise as much as I loved the making up of stories, so I kept going. I'm not sure I ever finished a lot of stories, apart from those I had to write for school, but there were always words around me, in the books I read, in the stories I started, and in the dreams I had for myself. I said that when I grew up I wanted to be many things - a teacher, a nurse, all those things that little girls say, but really I wanted to be a writer. Who knows where these things come from? I can only really guess at the motivations of a seven year old, from the distance of my thirties.

I have no idea when I started saying the words out loud, 'I want to be a writer' but I'm sure it started before I hit my teens. By then I was passionate about great writers - the Bronte sisters in particular - and those books kept me from entirely losing the plot during the long, very lonely high school years. It was a case of me and the books against the world.

The bullied, frightened child will always need somewhere to hide. The further I retreated into books and dreams, the more certain I became that writing would save me somehow from a miserable and isolated existence that was my life at high school.

Part of the problem with this beginning, of course, was the certainty that fame and fortune was the way to freedom, as far away as possible from small town high school and crippling loneliness. Years later, I would start to see that the dream of fame of fortune was ultimately immature and destructive, obscuring the actual desire to write.

+++

Fast forward a decade - to the mid 90s - and I was writing.

University was over and I was living in a large group house, discovering, in a wide eyed way, the wonders of life outside of my family home, the church and all that that entailed. I told anyone who would listen that I was a writer. And more to the point, I was really writing. Lots of people I knew wanted to be writers but as far as I could see, they weren't actually writing. I was working in dull temp jobs, trying desperately to delay entry into permanent employment because attaining that dream, literary fame and fortune, was just around the corner. The book I was writing was going to make me a star!

I knew I was on the right track because I was short listed for a short story prize and the writer who ran my writing group said good things about my work. Things were going to happen.

At the time, grunge was all the rage and in Australia, there were loads of young, grungy writers making big names for themselves. I thought I could be like them, but I was writing a nice book, about a girl growing up in a small town and dreaming of the Brontes. I was never going to be like the young, grungy writers.

In 1995, I entered the Vogel award with my first book. The Vogel award is a lucrative, prestigious Australian contest for an unpublished novel by an author under the age of thirty-five. I didn't win and I remember being crushed, as if I had thought I really stood a chance. The novel was literally finished and printed out just days before entries closed. I think one or two friends did a quick edit and that was it. I really thought that was all there was to it. Looking back, I see what the real achievement was there. A finished book is a massive achievement. Never mind that I plan never to look at it again. That first hurdle, finishing something, was done.

By 1998, I was living in London, having escaped a disasterous, short-lived marriage. That was fine. Such things made good novelists, I was sure. A bit of tragedy, a dash of suffering, that's what writers need.

I remember saying to a friend around that time, 'What else are all these experiences for if not for writing about them?'

'For living?' he suggested. I've never forgotten it because it struck me as odd. I truly believed that everything I was doing, every experience I was having, was simply a way to get material for writing.

In London, where I lived for most of a year, I submitted a reworked version of the first novel to The Women's Press and then quickly left the country to come home, because I was homesick and lost.

My London aunt forwarded a letter from the Women's Press months later. They were interested in the chapters I'd sent them and could I send more? Of course! I quickly tidied up the book again and sent it off.

A rejection promptly followed. They rejected it and so did I. It was time to move on. First novels are notoriously self involved and poor and I decided I could do better.

The second and third novels never really got off the ground. There might have even been a fourth. I don't remember any more. Well into this decade, I was still plugging away. I'd had more success with short stories, being shortlisted for contests but never winning.

The novel writing had to happen around life by then. I was a Government employee, not a particularly happy one, and had met my husband and settled down. The more settled I became, the more tortured the writing process became. Like the biological clock, the more years passed, the more desperate I felt. Every time someone asked me how the book was going, I felt the blood rush to my head and my ears would ring ferociously. There was no book. Just an endless stream of rejected drafts and a growing sense of failure.

I took courses. I attended workshops. I read books on writing. I sought inspiration from the writers I loved most.

And yet it wasn't happening. I was miserable. I had to give it up. I'd completely lost the ability to enjoy writing. I hated it. I was doing it because I'd backed myself into a corner. It's what I felt had to happen or else my life would be meaningless.

In mid 2004, I collapsed under the weight of my own expectation and knew that writing had to stop. Suddenly, I felt like I could breathe again. My time was my own - or more than it had been for a long time - and I could do anything I wanted.

What did I do? I dug out some old knitting needles and began to relearn a craft I'd abandoned in my teen years.

And here I am. Knitting and blogging are two of my great loves now and I have trouble imagining life without the creative outlet they provide.

+++

I never said I'd give up writing for good. Blogging has been a wonderful way to keep up the act of writing in a way that's been so much fun for me. There's been no pressure, just the exploration of a craft, making friends and communicating.

I'll admit that I'm afraid of opening up the door to that pressure again. I fear the moment I sit down at the computer to "write," as opposed to just writing like I do here, the pressure will mount and I'll be back where I was in 2004. How would I fit it in? I work more now than I did back then. I have filled my life with so much.

I don't know what the answer is but I am starting to feel like there is another book in my future. Not today. And not tomorrow. But after that? Who knows? I just know that the dream has changed. It's less about winning major awards now and more about enjoying doing what, deep down, I've always suspected I'm best at.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. It's been a pleasure to write and to remember. I'm here right now, writing these words, because people read them and that means so much.

I'm in Greenland! I promise to catch up on comments, and come round and visit you all, just as soon as I get home. I'll try to keep in touch via Twitter and my Facebook page.

Cotswold Crazy

2010-06-20T16:00:00.103+01:00

This year, the world-famous cheeserolling has been cancelled due to health and safety concerns. Of course throwing yourself down a hill after a lump of cheese is neither healthy nor particularly safe, but surely that's the point? I have to confess I'm disappointed.

But fear not. The crazy people still have plenty of ideas to keep themselves occupied on a grey bank holiday afternoon.

Take, for instance, the Tetbury Woolsack Races. Now in their 37th year, the goal of this particular event is to run a race while carrying a 60lb sack of wool (for men; it's 'only' 35lb for women).

Who thinks of these things?!

I know, I know. The English are famous for their eccentricity. But honestly, I'd never seen anything like this before I moved to the Cotswolds - yet here, it seems that almost every village has its own bonkers tradition.

Oh - and just in case the idea of running along a (rather hilly!) road with 60lb on your back doesn't sound quite mad enough yet, silly costumes are also par for the course. This year, there were two whole teams dressed as foxes.

It was interesting to observe the different strategies for lifting and holding the giant sacks of wool.

Some were more succcessful than others; one poor fox dropped his sack and struggled to get it back on his shoulders again, eventually resorting to walking the last few yards with the sack clutched in front of him.

There's even a children's race (with lighter sacks, naturally) :

The whole town was dressed up for the festivities, with market stalls and fairground rides. After watching a few races and munching ice-cream, we stopped off for coffee and scones on our way home. There are some things the Cotswolds do really, really well. Cream teas, and crazy.

The World's Scariest Landings

2010-06-18T16:00:00.022+01:00

Today's post is by someone whose travel history makes mine look mundane. I've always loved flying, so I was fascinated to read Ian's take on the scariest landings in the world... if anything, I'm just jealous of these experiences! Though I will get to take a helicopter to start the journey home from Narsaq.

The World's Scariest Landings
by Bangkok Ian

Hi, welcome to my first guest post. I opted to write about travel, thanks for the opportunity Rachel. I consider travel to be the most rewarding of pastimes and welcome its mind-expanding experiences. Having visited more than 60 countries I feel qualified to write with some authority on airports, specifically the approaches to them from the air.

I have two particular tales to relate to you; they concern 'character building' descents to a couple of notable airports. I used to think the old Hong Kong airport was quite unsafe and it scared me a little.

The first airport that really got to me was Paro International, Bhutan. A cuter, more twee international airport there cannot be. There are only a handful of flights a week and the main terminal is no bigger than a branch of Starbucks. The immigration officer was about 75 years old and wore an embroidered silk gown complete with mandarin style headgear and Fu Manchu inspired moustache. I saw this on shaky legs, shaky for two reasons; firstly the lack of oxygen, the airport is at about 8,000 feet above sea level. The second reason for unsteady legs was the final approach I had just experienced.

Apparently the flight simulator sequence that all pilots must successfully complete before getting approval to fly into Paro has only been passed by eight pilots, mostly ex-military gung-ho types. Our pilot was a Sikh who had flown fighter jets in the Indian Air Force.

The first indication I had that the landing may be eventful was the curious announcement from the stewardess, it went something like this. "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. We will shortly be beginning our descent into Paro airport. Please tighten your seatbelts and do not be alarmed by the proximity of the mountains or the attitude of the aircraft, this is perfectly normal."

Well, she had my attention so I looked out of the window. A curtain of Himalayan mountains, much higher than our current height was filling the sky. The plane appeared to be heading straight for the peaks. Suddenly it flipped sideways and I was looking down at the adjacent bank of seats. No sooner had I got used to the new angle when equally suddenly the plane banked violently to the opposite side and levelled off before thudding down and screeching to a halt on the runway. Looking back towards the mountains I could not see where the plane had threaded itself through. All the passengers broke out into spontaneous applause and breathed a collective sigh of relief. The old Hong Kong airport had nothing on this; it was more like a horribly real theme park ride.

Two years ago, however, I was forced to revise my number one scariest airport yet again to be Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand. I was in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, not a big plane, five seats including the pilot. I was upfront with the dual set of controls just in front of me. In so small a plane you feel every little turbulent bump much more acutely and the ride over, or rather through, the tops of the snow covered mountain range en route to Milford Sound fiord was turning into quite a memorable journey.

From our departure airport at Queenstown the little plane was scheduled to fly for about 40 minutes to meet up with our cruise vessel for the middle section of the day on Milford Sound. The pilot’s voice crackled into my headphones "There’s the strip below." I was incredulous – surely he didn’t mean that short bit of tarmac between the river and the sea nestled between mountains of 6,000 feet minimum! I’m afraid he did – he put the plane into an impossibly steep suicidal dive down the mountainside and levelled out over a river before plopping down and slamming on the brakes. Milford Sound: a new scariest airport for my list. I looked forward to my lunchtime cruise to recover and then panic set in as I realised we would have to do the same in reverse later that day to get back to Queenstown.

Does anyone have another contender for the world’s most character building landing?

I'm in Greenland! I promise to catch up on comments, and come round and visit you all, just as soon as I get home. I'll try to keep in touch via Twitter and my Facebook page.

Learning Sports

2010-06-16T16:00:00.034+01:00

I was never really athletic at school, and my parents didn't watch any sporting events on TV, so I managed to reach adulthood with very little understanding of the rules of most sports.

Then I met, and subsequently married, my husband - who is interested in pretty much any sport you could imagine.

Talk about a change.

Now, I pride myself on the breadth of my interests. I genuinely like to believe that if there is interest to be found in a subject, I should be able to find it, and certainly millions of people find something compelling about sports. So. A personal challenge. Learn, and learn to love, at least some sports.

There's a twist in this tale, though, because we don't have a television. So instead of sitting and having my husband point things out on a screen, over the last couple of years I've been trying to learn sports from the radio.

I got into Formula 1 racing quite easily. It's essentially just a race. Aside from the fact that they change the rules every year, it's quite easy to follow: they go round and round in circles, with occasional stops and occasional crashes, and that's pretty much it.

I also love the Olympics (especially the winter events - skiing, etc) though for this I will go to someone else's house and watch the TV coverage!

I've found it harder to become involved with more complex sports. Example: the cricket. Andrew loves his cricket, and he's patiently explained the rules to me more than once, but I find that my ears just switch off when I try to listen to it. I'm sort-of interested in the results (as long as it's England playing) but when I try to follow what's actually happening, I simply can't translate from the commentary into positions on an imaginary mental cricket pitch.

Rugby is even worse, because it's faster, and it's simply impossible to follow if you don't know what they mean by all their jargon (though I did get a bit more understanding when we went to the cinema to watch Invictus... but I still can't follow it on the radio).

What's your favourite sport? Do you know of any that work particularly well on the radio?

I'm in Greenland! I promise to catch up on comments, and come round and visit you all, just as soon as I get home. I'll try to keep in touch via Twitter and my Facebook page.

Vegan Sweet Potato Falafel

2010-06-14T16:00:00.060+01:00

Time for a recipe - and since I should currently be cooking over a camp stove, I need to hand this one over to one of my Twitter buddies.

Jenny has a fun video blog at Jenny Learns to Cook, which has only been running since March, so please go and support her. Since I haven't got the whole video thing down, yet (something I promise to work on now I have a camera which takes video!) she kindly agreed to write actual words for this post. I think you'll find her personality and style still shines through!

Vegan Sweet Potato Falafels
by Jenny of Jenny Learns to Cook

My brother is a vegan hippie and it was his birthday last week, so a trip to Whole Foods and a first time experience with Indian ingredients was in store. This recipe is fun if only for the reason that it's insanely easy - throw a bunch of stuff together and bake it in vague ball shapes - and yet mention them to someone and jaws drop, backs get patted... or maybe that only happened in my imagination. Cilantro can have that effect on you. So first, the ingredients:

2 Sweet Potatoes (about 1½ lbs)
1 cup Chickpea (Garbonzo Bean) Flour
Lotsa Cilantro (I just used the whole package I bought)
2 Cloves Garlic (minced)
The juice of half a lemon
1½ tsp Coriander
1½ tsp Cumin
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil
Sesame Seeds (for garnish)

Chickpea Flour was the hardest thing to find ever. Or not really. I found it at Whole Foods, buried at the bottom of the flour section. Only problem: since you only need about a cup for this, I now have a ¾ full bag of Chickpea Flour with no idea how to finish it off. Also - I read that if you can't find it, you can substitute it by roasting some dry garbanzos and grinding them up yourself. Might even be more cost effective.

Roast your sweet potatoes on 450°F (230°C) for 45 minutes. Then take them out and let them cool while you smell up your kitchen with the cardamom, cumin, cilantro, garlic, chickpea flour, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Or, if that list was too long for your attention span, everything except the olive oil and sesame seeds.

That happens to me a lot with recipes - I get a "skim" attitude. No matter how many times I force myself to read EVERY INGREDIENT, I can't. So, yea. Take out all of the ingredients, hide the sesame seeds and oil, and mix everything else together... just don't forget where you hid them, because you need them later. Anyway.

Undress your sweet potatoes - singing raunchy stripper-type songs isn't necessary, but I feel it helps the flavah.

Mash it all together with a fork, and let it sit in the fridge for about an hour. Or a potato masher. But I do not own a dishwasher, so the fewer utensils I can use, the better.

I actually had to make these a day ahead, so I'll find out if a cold, hard night does anything to my poor falafels. A day later, ball 'em up. I used an ice cream scoop so they would be vaguely the same size, but you still have to go all play-dough on they're asses if you want nicer shapes.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds (or in hindsight, rolling them around until you can't see any orange would have been utterly divine) and pop into a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes, and VIOLA! I ate mine on a whole wheat pita with hummus and avocado slices. Because it was my brother's birthday and he's a hippie. So there.

PS - I found this recipe at 101 Cookbooks, so click the link for their article.

I'm in Greenland! I promise to catch up on comments, and come round and visit you all, just as soon as I get home. I'll try to keep in touch via Twitter and my Facebook page.

On Sequels

2010-06-12T16:00:00.005+01:00

This is turning into an accidental mini-series on exposition; you might want to check out my earlier thoughts on the importance of subtlety and expository dialogue.

I'm currently working on a sequel to REBELLION (yeah! Volume 1 finally has a title!). And a sequel opens a whole new can of worms so far as exposition is concerned. How to make the new book accessible to a new reader, without boring or alienating those who've already read volume one?

On a lot of TV shows, each episode opens with a reminder of pertinent scenes from earlier episodes. It would feel clumsy to put a similar "The story so far..." get-out in a book, but the need is still there. It just isn't safe to assume that every reader will have read the previous book.

Well, I suppose you could simply insist - but that would be not only arrogant, but counterproductive. If someone happens across a later volume in a bookshop or a library, wouldn't it be preferable if they could read it right away and then (if they enjoyed it) go back to read the earlier books afterwards?

I actually have to face up to this twice, since it seems that the Charanthe series has morphed into a trilogy (against my better judgement - fantasy trilogies are such a cliche....).

In both cases, without really planning it, I have new characters appearing within the first few pages. This definitely helps: there are questions that would naturally be asked, which will help me to bring out a tiny bit of context.

There's only one way to find out whether it works, though: I'm going to need to find some test readers who haven't read any of the series so far. Because there's only so much pretending-I-don't-know-my-own-story that I can do!

I'm in Greenland! I promise to catch up on comments, and come round and visit you all, just as soon as I get home. I'll try to keep in touch via Twitter and my Facebook page.