Who We Are - and other Mysteries.

I've never composed a blog post on my phone before. The kids have run off with all computing hardware, so I'm giving this method a try.

It's almost the shortest day of the year. I'm slowly emerging from one of my regular 2-day migraines and I'm drawn to the light, even if it is a weak daylight; daylight with a hint of murk, like the water we  dipped paint brushes into at school.

I try to urge the screen-addicted youngsters into the garden.

'Why dont we feed the fish?' I ask. Too brightly.

'THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO WE ARE!' replies the daughter.

A few years ago, I wrote this poem, after seeing my son in the school nativity play.  It's short. A bonus for many.

 

So, here we are then,  post election madness in the middle of a Climate Emergency.  This is my cartoon of the year:

But we have friends. We have each other.  From the fish in the pond, the magpies on the bare branches and the stars in the sky, it goes without saying, I hope there is peace at Christmas, especially for those who need it most. 

What The Record-buying Public Need to Know

Dear Reader, you find me, demi-reclining on a duvet day. I shall not be ashamed of my duvet day. Indeed, we all need recuperation.

What the record-buying public need to know, is that behind every great drummer, there's a great wuman who looks after the kids. Unsung. You see, I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet here, but the trumpets of every darn man or woman who is the home-maker, the ones who do the crucial, but less celebrated, domestic dance.

Tess's drawing of flowers

Teenage Fanclub have been recording in Hamburg all week and I am worn out with general child-care and menopausey-nonsense (it's a medical term). 

I have also sacrificed a trip to the Basque Country (wearing a Basque is still optional, if I weren't so knackered). This weekend, the lovely Rachel Newton will be reading out my poems and playing her harp with native, 'cool-chick' Uxue Alberdi.

It was lovely to be invited, but I  feel torn and conflicted about the environmental cost of flying, and it's a long way on a train, when your man is drumming in Hamburg. I wish the festival luck and look forward to seeing photos.

Meanwhile, the kids and I survive by watching Glee on Netflix. I am not in the least ashamed of this either. It is fabulous, jazz-hands escapism. 

Afterwards, the kids asked me to name a few Elton John songs.

'Sorry seems to be the hardest word.'

Tess replied, in utter sincerity  -'What?! Surely pharmacist or acquaintance are the hardest words?' Spelling homework is going well then. 

Ah well, the December sun is falling fast. Next stop, school pick up. May your duvets be warm and wide, when you need them. 

Remember, remember...

The fifth of November: a beautiful autumn day. This was Argyll splendour, last month.

My son is 11 today. Of course, we're making the day all about him, but I will forgive any mother who takes a couple of minutes to think - Wow, X years ago, I gave birth! Well done me! What an crazy night that was, and no one tells you the half of it.

In all the hustle and bustle, I didn't get to blog about my August adventures at the amazing Edinburgh Book Festival. It was great to work on the Throwing Voices project, with  Uxue Alberdi from the Basque Country and Scotland's own Rachel Newton and her harp. Rachel has just released a digital EP of tunes inspired by our poems. 

Hanging out in the author's yurt was my favourite bit. Can't beat a bit of lit chat with your heroes. Talking to the legendary Carol Ann Duffy was like sunbathing on a warm rock. Perhaps I should have been more terrified, but she was warm and lovely. And Eddie Izzard teetered in, wearing a red dress and heels. Respect.

I got my photo taken by the talented EBF photographer Chris Close. I like to lean on a pillar one Tuesday a month. You can tell.

What else? I was an extra this week for my TV-director brother, John MacLaverty. He is making a documentary about Scottish swearing. Don't tell our mum. I had to be in a crowd scene and someone had to shout out a sweary sentence. Glad it wasn't me. There are limits to my extroversion. 

Poetry, of course, can be quite an introverted sport. I've rejoined a poetry night class, to try and write more frequently. Most of my days are taken up with cooking and cleaning and collecting the kids. But that's okay, isn't it? I'd go as far as saying that's vital. 

National Poetry Day...whey hey?

Hello Long Lost Friends,

Do you ever feel like a criminal? I'm going dark here, but I started to feel like an eco criminal every time I put a plastic food tray in the bin. Now my kitchen cupboards are stuffed with empty grape tubs, because I can't find a place to recycle them, in a city the size of Glasgow. 

I contacted the council, who sent me on a fruitless goose chase. At the municipal recycling centre (aka, The Dump) a man in a high viz jacket pronounced, 

Plastic's plastic, hen. Just chuck it all in thi'gither

On twitter, a council official told me what I already suspected. This was blue bin 'contamination' and not correct. So I'm back to feeling like a 'crim' with plastic tubs filling up my cupboards, trying to find somewhere to recycle them. And yes, we should be trying to buy fewer (less?) of them to start with. 

Here's me, years ago, before I was aware of my eco-criminal status. I was watching a boy called 'Beans' iron my tartan trousers in a photo-shoot for Belle and Sebastian. I say photo-shoot, but really, we had no idea what we were doing. My mother once described us as 'not wise'. 

Anyway,  did you tell me it was National Poetry Day? 

As poet Hollie McNish put it on twitter, 'you go outside and no-one gives two shits.' That made me smile.

But, fie, my friends....we will celebrate poetry and words at The Wigtown Book Festival this weekend. 

Me and my 'paw' (Bernard MacLaverty) are doing a reading for Scottish Pen talking about place and peace, Ireland to Scotland, culture and borders, life and love. 

I will leave you with this poem that reduced me to tears. The kind of poem I wish I could write. It's so apt in these crazy and catastrophic times. We're all in it thi-gither, as the bin man said. He wasn't wrong on that .

Two last links!

Pat's West End Website / Glasgow Poets - here

and, treat yourself to some plastic-free, poetry pamphlets via

Tapsalteerie Press - here!

Edinburgh, You Rock!

What an exciting evening I've had. It's not every day you get an invite from the First Minister of Scotland to a reception celebrating the opening of Edinburgh's International Festival(s!). 

There's me thinking, 'lucky I didn't wear my red dress.'

Nicola (yes, I eventually just called her Nicola. Was that alright, etiquette wise? It felt okay)...Nicola made a lovely impromptu welcome speech about how important it was - now, more than ever, to support the Arts and foster better  communication and understanding. 

She went on to praise the Book Festival's newly-erected marquees outside Bute House. The process of building the book festival was so noisy, she could hardly hear Boris. I may have guffawed. I tried to do it politely. 

I met two great women from Edinburgh Science Festival. I loved how enthusiastic and passionate they were about science. The opposite of Donald Trump. 

Yes, we need Arts more than ever, but we desperately need science too. We need the Arts to speak for science.  I feel a link to Extinction Rebellion coming on. 

Arts, Science and the Climate Emergency, are all passions and preoccupations, as if you didn't know, if you've ever glanced at my Twitter feed. 

So, friends; a week to go before I will be reading at Edinburgh Book Festival. Monday 12th, 6pm.  The show is part of the Throwing Voices sequence and you can book tickets and learn more here.  It would be lovely to see you there for coffee and scones, poems and songs. And maybe a few guffaws. 

Things we know and things we don't

I can be so contrary. I've changed the name of the ol' blog again. These things I know. That'll do for this week. 

It has echoes of one of my favourite novels; a book by Wally Lamb called,  'I Know This Much is True.'

And it ties in with a poetry theme I'll be exploring at Edinburgh Book Festival in August. Is parenting easier because you don't know what lies ahead? We learn fast as parents, we have to, and there's always  a skip-load more to learn. 

Hindsight is defined as: understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed. I think that's where most poetry hangs out. That's where we have to look for it. 

But wait - did I just say, Edinburgh International Book Festival? I'm still so thrilled to be asked. Here's the link to the Throwing Voices event (with photo of Basque writer Uxue Alberdi). Come along and see us. 

Before that, if you're in Glasgow on Wednesday evening, pop up to their cafe for this event, when I'll be talking about the fantastic New Writers' Awards and readíng a few poems alongside talented Kirstin Innes and Juliette Forrest, an ascending star in young adult literature. 

Did you catch 8 DAYS to the Moon and Back? It was a mind-expanding watch. I kept thinking, but HOW? How did they DO IT? They hadn't even invented the iPhone. Or the Internet. 

The moon looks beautiful tonight. Almost full. Once, I talked to a man who was taking photos of the moon with a tripod, by the V&A museum, on a cold February night. He confessed that most of the great moon shots are photo shopped. They shoot the moon as it is, but make it bigger in context to the buildings or landscape. That's okay in my book. A wee bit of embellishment can't hurt.

Old Tales, New Tales, Ease Your Troubled Mind

Would you look at that rain. And nearly June!

I've changed the title of my blog to Tales from the Mum-iverse. On a whim. I never liked the old title anyway. I googled Mum-iverse and no one else has used it, so I will. 

But, hey - it's not all about me. How are YOU? How are we ALL?

The country's gone crazy. The world's gone crazy. Brexit insanity and only 12 years left to avert an ecological tipping point into Climate Crisis. 

I don't know where to begin, with my armchair philosophy. I do all I can. I even went to meet my MP, Patrick Grady of the SNP. He is very personable and reasonable and he said, 'We are doing all we can'. He wrote letters to the council. The council wrote to me and said, 'We are doing all we can.'

But when I walk into my back garden at 8am and smell the exhaust -fume fug of rush-hour diesel and petrol from a busy road, three streets away, I just want it all to happen more quickly. In five or ten years, not 30 years! I really, really want clean air. 

Well, what else? I was honoured to work on Coorie Doon at the Children's Hospital in Glasgow, with parents of babies in the Special Care Unit. BBC Radio Scotland did a report you can listen to at 1 hour 35 minutes into this programme.  I think there will be a short film too. I'll post it when it's ready. 

I'm looking forward to the 'lit' thrill that is Edinburgh Book Festival, this year (Watch this space. Announcement pending. It may involve rabbits and double buggies. Surreal, and cryptic, huh?) 

Meanwhile, if you have any troubles, be sure and confide in Andrea Boto, Mustard Salesman from Dijon. He can help you stand up against your oppressors and ease your troubled mind. Until next time...

Bloomin' January

Good People! Happy 2019! 

The cherry tree in the garden is leading the cheer, if not the cherries. The goldfish are hiding beneath the ice of the pond, like  orange sweets from a box of Quality Street.

Don't forget to spend those January Vouchers...

Doh! It's expired. 

I had a great day yesterday - on the day of my 51st Birthday. 

It was an honour to visit St Ninian's High School to teach and talk poetry with some of the S3 pupils there. We had two sessions and it was great to see their confidence grow by the second session, where they all wrote and read out their work. Bravo!

Big thanks to the wonderful Scottish Book Trust for supporting the visits. Check out how it works on The Live Literature Database.  

Klaxon: Blow My Own Trumpet alert! Did I tell you the Times Literary Supplement reviewed my poems ('striking') and called me 'a born enthusiast'? Well, I have now. End of trumpet-ry.

Past Love Pamphlet is still available here for a 'deep sea diver' at Tapsalteerie Press (shortlisted for a publishers award too).

And, just in case I get 'above myself', I always have my family to tip their buckets of black humour over me. Some might say this was a strange birthday card, but it did make me laugh. And that's the point, surely. Better get shopping for antique brooches.

Be kind to each other while I go for the groceries. Can you manage that? I have faith in you.