Still here...

Sorry I am not around in Blogland so much lately. My energy always takes a dip during the November darkness, but picks up a bit as Christmas approaches. I ventured out of my hermit's cave this week, to visit Birmingham's German Christmas market. The bull in the Bullring is all ready for a fancy dress party. In fact, he's so excited that he's been penned in with a sturdy red rope to prevent escape!



The market is full of pretty things, as always. I think I will have to go in again before Christmas to have another look at the beautiful coloured glass. I usually come away wishing I'd bought more. But then, it's not very practical to collect coloured glass with a large dog in the house.

Hope you are all enjoying your Christmas preparations.

Some people seem to be shopping like maniacs, while others queue at the many food banks that seem to be springing up around our towns and cities. Strange world.

Writing news, and a hot tip for cosy toes.

After a quiet summer, some writing news. A couple of weeks ago I went to the University of Wales Trinity St David in Carmarthen, to read at the prizegiving of the Ifanca Helene James short story competition. I had a lovely couple of days, featuring a scenic train journey, a male voice choir, and lots of walking uphill (never down).

I also found I had been shortlisted for the Doris Gooderson short story competition, run by Wrekin Writers.

I have entered more writing competitions than usual this year. In part this was because I wrote several pieces as homework for the writers' group which were too dark or strange for the magazines I submit to. Next year I plan to enter less competitions. It's lovely to win anything, or be shortlisted, but I have felt for some time that I should be focusing on a bigger project. I have a couple of novel ideas, but neither of those seems to be happening right now. So I have decided to see if I can put together the short story collection on a theme, which I've been contemplating since last year. It seems more manageable within my bitty work schedule.

With two recent short story sales to My Weekly, I shall not be giving up magazine writing though. I find it an excellent antidote to my workaday world.

On a different note, I saw Willy Russell's fabulous show Blood Brothers this week. You can not imagine how wonderful it was to see 'Tell Me It's Not True' performed so brilliantly, after my hours spent trying to learn even the most basic version on the piano! All the cast were great, but I must give a special mention to Niki Evans. Apparently she was an X Factor contestant a few years ago. She was absolutely outstanding as Mrs Johnstone, the woman who gives away one of her twins so she can afford to feed the rest of her family.

Finally, with dark nights and chilly temperatures, how would you like to win some lovely socks? Librarian, who blogs at From My Mental Library, has a mother with a talent for knitting. She sells some of her products via an Etsy shop. To win a free hand-knitted item from the range on sale, all you have to do is visit Librarian's blog and leave a comment on the 'Cold Season Giveaway' post. I love socks so much, I can barely close my sock drawer. Count me in!

The Ifakara Bakery Project Competition and Anthology: a guest post by Sharon Bradshaw

Today I am happy to introduce my writing friend Sharon Bradshaw.

Sharon is organising a writing competition to raise funds for a charity close to her heart.

I'm handing over to her now, to tell you all about it.

"I started to fundraise for the Ifakara Bakery Project Charity in 2010 when I met the organisers, Margaret and Eugene Schellenberg. They were giving a presentation about the work which the Charity was doing in Tanzania. It was difficult to listen to some of the things they were saying and to see the photographs of the hardship which the children, disabled and others, had to undergo. It's now a well told tale about Africa, but Margaret and Eugene had done something different. They built a bakery in 2001 which is currently run as a successful business by the local people and ensures that no-one need starve when there are problems with the maize crop, but there are still so many who have to survive without basic necessities.

They have continued to give Ifakara 'talks' and others have become involved in the fundraising so that the Charity is now able to provide additional money for irrigation, electricity, and education. There is an emergency fund too for when crops fail completely due to adverse weather. The Charity provides bread for the orphanage, nursery schools, hospital patients, those with leprosy and learning difficulties.

I have been a Solicitor since 1981 and started to write poetry a few years ago. I didn't realise at the time that writing can take you to so many different places, and I'm now running a writing competition to help raise funds. I asked David Howarth, editor of Park Publications, if he would support the project, which he has done by advertising throughout his magazines, Scribble and Countryside Tales.

I'm asking writers to send me their 'Hopes and Dreams' as poems or short stories with £2.50 per entry or £4.00 for two. A selection will be published by Park Publications in an anthology early next year. There's also prize money: £150, £75, and £25. I've managed to raise the prize money by various other fundraising activities and have had a stall at a local bric-a-brac fair to sell unwanted items, so that after the printing costs are paid all of the funds raised will be sent to Ifakara. The Charity does not deduct administration charges.

I would like to be able to help the children in Mhutanga to have clean water. Their school has grown from 30 to 90 children and has to be run on a shift basis. They have bread and a mug of sweet tea after lessons. Many of them have had to walk a long way to get to school, with little or no breakfast. Parents have then to walk a lot further to get the water for the tea as they cannot access good water where they are without a bore hole.

I've written articles about the competition for Writers' Forum and Writing Magazine and the entries have been coming in, but it would be lovely to receive more. An anthology for Ifakara would mean so much to the children, and you can help by letting me have your words before the closing date on November 30th, 2012. It's not yet the end of the story.

For more details on the work being undertaken please visit the Ifakara Bakery Project website. And for full details of the competition, please see the Park Publications competition page.

Thank you, Sharon, for sharing this with us. I do hope some visitors to Zigzag Road will feel inspired by your enthusiasm, and send in a story or a poem. Personally, I think it's refreshing to see how a small number of determined people can make a real difference to the lives of others.

Jo's new desk

I wanted to show you my new desk, but you know how a certain dog pops up everywhere. Harvey's rather full of himself at present, as he is to appear in a Christmas story later this year. He doesn't mind that I changed his name for the purposes of the story, since he has already had friend requests on Facebook from people he doesn't know. How do these people find you? It's a mystery. Of course if genuine friends of mine wish to befriend Harvey, that's fine. He's a pretty friendly dog.

My desk cost twenty pounds in a charity shop. Maybe my grandparents had a similar one when I was small. There feels something very familiar about all the neat compartments inside the fold-down front.

Apparently the young folk refer to a charity shop as a 'chazza'. Does anyone else know this expression? It was a word I'd never heard before, but now I'm using it all the time, being such a chazza addict.

Nostalgia seems the theme of my life lately. I've been re-reading a childhood favourite, 'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It's a lovely escapist book. I think you can read it at any age and still be uplifted by it.

And two other nice books I bought from the chazza recently for a couple of pounds: H.E. Bates' 'The Darling Buds of May' and 'A Breath of French Air'. The latter seemed particularly appropriate after my little excursion this summer. I love the 1950s style of the covers, and have enjoyed reading them both, although it is hard not to picture David Jason as Pop Larkin.

That's it for now. The desk awaits!

A change of air (part two): Dungeness

From Paris I went to spend a few days with friends in Kent. What a contrast. From busy streets to green, rolling hills. From crowds to relative solitude. And although the Seine was lovely, in my opinion nothing beats the seaside.

The absolute highlight, I have to say, was visiting Dungeness. Yes, it has a nuclear power station, which, I appreciate, might be off-putting for some people. But there is also one of the biggest shingle beaches in the world and a unique garden made by the late film maker, stage designer, writer and painter, Derek Jarman. For years the book about this garden has been on my shelf and I always wanted to see the place for real. It was almost a surprise when we drove up the long road beside the beach, and I recognised Prospect Cottage, which I'd admired so often in the book's beautiful photographs by Howard Sooley.

I think maybe there are not so many of the driftwood and metal sculptures in the garden as appear in the book, but you can still see an extract from the John Donne poem 'The Sunne Rising' on the side of the cottage.

Beneath blue skies and sunshine, the place was tranquil. A skylark sang and the waves lapped gently on the pebbly beach. I imagine that in the middle of winter, in a howling gale, it may seem bleaker. In the book, Derek Jarman wrote about a power cut which lasted five days. Ironic, when the cottage is in spitting distance of the power station which remained, he said, "a blaze of light". But what a view to wake up to every morning. 

Whereas Paris was intense, full-on, bombarding the senses from every angle, Dungeness was a much simpler. A pared down kind of landscape. I noticed much more the textures of things. The variety of colours in the pebbles. The clouds passing over the sea. I'd love to go again, whatever the weather.

A change of air (part one): Paris

Bastille Day today, so it seems fitting to post a few pics from my holiday. I spent the first couple of days in Paris - and what an experience it was! Loved my first sight of the Eiffel Tower, and the Seine beneath beautiful blue skies.

From there I did the tourist bit and took an open top bus around the city - a lovely, relaxing way to get my bearings.

Gosh, Paris was hot, and busy! Lots of traffic. Lots of motorbikes. Also, I have to say, many beggars alongside all the grand buildings and smart shops. Beggars with dogs, cats and children.

But there were many elegant, quiet streets and green spaces too.



With limited time in the city, I decided against tackling the Louvre. Instead I went to the lovely cool and uncrowded Orangerie to see Monet's huge waterlily paintings. Definitely recommended. 

Next morning I climbed the many steps up to Montmartre with its cobbled streets and pavement artists.

The views across Paris from Sacre Coeur were amazing. So much to see, from the man doing T'ai chi on the terrace, to the hawkers spreading out their glittery miniature Eiffel Towers in the hope of a sale before the Police arrived.

Next time, the second half of my holiday and some very different scenery!

Fiona Joseph and Beatrice Cadbury

This week at our local writers' group we spent a lovely morning in the company of Fiona Joseph. Fiona is the author of a recent biography, titled 'Beatrice: The Cadbury Heiress Who Gave Away Her Fortune'.

If I say Cadbury, I guess most of you will think of chocolate. Maybe you will be aware that the Cadbury chocolate firm was founded by a Quaker family, who built a village for their factory workers, at Bournville, Birmingham. But did you know that in 1920 Beatrice Cadbury decided her wealth was incompatible with her social conscience, and so gave all her shares in the company to Cadbury employees? Well, I certainly didn't know that, despite my addiction to everything chocolatey.

During the morning, Fiona read extracts from the book, and spoke about how her first glimmer of interest in Beatrice Cadbury grew to something of an obsession. Research took Fiona to The Netherlands, where Beatrice spent much of her later life, raising eight children in circumstances very much poorer than she had known as a child. Fiona talked about the process of publishing the book, which she did under her own imprint of Foxwell Press, and shared lot of useful advice with members of the group.

I really enjoyed hearing about Beatrice's unconventional life, and how she dedicated herself to working for peace and social justice. For further information, Fiona's website is here.