I must admit that I have sometimes felt a deep disappointment about this. There are many mornings when sashaying around my garden in the south of France seems far preferable to less sultry endeavors. But I don’t own a garden in the South of France…not yet anyway. And if I did one of its pleasures would surely be sitting in the sunshine and enjoying a large cup of Earl Grey Tea surrounded by the uplifting aroma of lavender.

The great thing about simple pleasures is that I can at least partially replicate this sensual scenario in wintry Co. Wicklow. I have the Earl Grey Tea and I have the lavender aromatherapy oil. And on a sunny morning golden sunbeams pour through my large kitchen window. Why wait for Provence? Life is here and now. As the Buddhists say ‘wherever you go you are there’.

In thriftier times simple pleasures become even more important. However it’s best not to get too happy clappy about this. Soaking in a seductive bubble bath will not, for example, fool you into thinking you are at a Caribbean health spa even if you surround yourself with scented candles. But a little pampering can go a long way and at least you don’t have to worry about mosquitoes. And curling up in front of an open fire with a good cat can be as delicious as coiffing cocktails in Park Avenue. That deep fortissimo purring is a concerto in itself.

Sometimes simple pleasures can be very small indeed, but no less important. One of my brothers loves Kimberley biscuits, but not the chocolate coated variety. For him to put chocolate on a Kimberley is to dilute the purity of the Kimberley experience. Vienetta has added vavavoom to many a family meal time. …And eating succulent toast smothered in butter and jam in bed has a voluptuous late night night feel about it…especially when it’s accompanied by cocoa.

Love,

Grace

‘This may sound like Bridget Jones territory but Alice is less spikey,
certainly drinks less and makes more effort to make a life for
herself…The writing is full of quirky wit and energy.’ ‘Book of the
Week’ THE EXPRESS (’Wise Follies’)

‘…..Grace Wynne-Jones has written an entertaining, intelligent and genuinely funny story….this is a great read, especially for commuters…guaranteed to shorten any journey.’ THE IRISH TIMES
(’The Truth Club’)

Found this quote (partial) from book posted on tumblr.com. in a blog. Thanks kind reader for posting it!

‘…this is one of the best Irish novels this year…The trip to Greece is steeped in olives and jasmine, cicadas and sunshine…readers will love the local gigolo, Dimitri. Grace writes with great humour…On a more serious note, her portrayal of friendship, commitment and the complexity of relationships is very real and most enjoyable.’ EVENING HERALD re. ‘Ready Or Not?’

On a crowded bus some time ago I sat beside a smartly-dressed middle-aged woman who was eating a big bag of popcorn.. Devouring it actually. She was shoving her hands right into the bottom of the bag and munching and crunching with the zeal of a ten year old. It had that slightly addictive shop bought snack smell about it…cheese flavoured perhaps…but not in the way cheese really smells. I almost felt like asking if I could have some too but by then she had consumed the lot and was holding up the bag to check if any stray morsels were left in it.

I felt rather delighted by her unselfconsciousness and the way she appeared to be acting completely out of character. When we see someone we do tend to form opinions about them according to their appearance. She seemed to be on to something. If she could eat popcorn like that she might be the woman on the package tour who didn’t go to the museum but flirted with waiters at a palm-fringed cafe….who could belt out ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ at a karaoke session…who could up and leave some worthy event because she’d decided there was something she’d prefer to watch on the telly.

As a novelist I enjoy such musings. Perhaps she wasn’t like that at all, but she did have a passion for the small pungent pleasures of popcorn and she didn’t care who knew it. Yes, she was growing older with panache.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

Love,

Grace

So it’s no wonder that the Wind In The Willows is one of my favourite children’s classics. It starts with Mole abandoning his spring cleaning. The bigger world is summoning him imperiously. He leaves his whitewashing without a second glance. I have experienced many similar moments. So many times I have dearly longed to dash out the door and leave behind tasks such as drafting complicated reports, filing or scrubbing the kitchen. ‘Yippee!’ I want to cry as I scurry towards Tuscany. Yes, why not go to Italy right now? It’s a refreshing thought anyway. One that sends a tangerine blast of elsewhere through the room. Out. I know I need to get out. Later. Maybe to the beach and an Italian cappuccino in a seacape cafe. Watching the waves glide and stretch. Embrace the shore…and leave it. At times like that what I really want is for everything to feel fresh and new again. Pristine and without my footprints. Like childhood snow.

Woooosh. That was the silent sound of it. A white carpet that had landed overnight. Silent. Still. New. Transforming. Cold too…but I didn’t mind.. I want to be out in it. Feeling its crunch, its curve and tingle. Its strangeness. I wanted to tumble into its softness. Hold it. Throw it. Taste it too. It might be gone soon. Rush…to get get dressed in woolies, coat, mittens, hat, gumboots. Magic. Yes, that’s what snow felt like. A familiar place had become elsewhere. New again.

These days snow has a very different meaning for me. Yes, I appreciate its beauty, but not its inconvenience. The grubby slush on city pavements. The turned up thermostats. The delays to transport. The nip in the air. It is not new snow it is old snow. I know it now. Or at least I think I do. Because that’s what happens as we grow older. We have footprints. A past that can dilute the present, if we let it. Sunshine, snowdrops and spring. We feel we know them. And yet we don’t. Not as they are this time. A child would know that. To allow things to be new again. A sort of adventure.

Wriggle…that’s what my mother’s pug pups used to do when I held them as a girl. Wriggle and squirm…their fawn coloured paws gently thrashing the air. They wanted to be off somewhere. They were enthusiastic…about everything it seemed. Unless they were asleep. Sometimes they lay contently on their backs displaying their sweet plump pink bellies. All young animals have it, and many older ones too. That excitement in sheer existence. Each walk is embarked on as though it is the first one ever. Food…wow. Even if it’s the same old chunks from a tin they scoff it down. Relishing every morsel. Whatever their past is they are open to love, if it is offered gently. It seems they are born with the secret of spring, but we have to learn it all over again each time we forget it. And take our first coltish steps towards beauty. As green shoots rise through the dark earth. And their flowers open for the first time.

Wishing you a happy New Year.

Lots of love,

Grace

Of course we attended one of the services ourselves and sang the carols lustily. A clergyman’s family is almost under an obligation to make up for the mumbled notes of some of the congregation. Even bats occasionally stirred seasonally in the rafters. My mother was very fond of these creatures. The church Sexton wanted to get rid of them but Mum protected them devotedly.

As a young girl I often thought about my presents during the service. Itemising them….savouring them. We were not rich so these treats felt special and I loved the gaudy cosy paper they came in. I sometimes looked around and wondered if I could spot new presents worn by the large congregation…a particularly posh hat or colourful scarf for example, or pretty mittens. Though it was morning I had probably already eaten some chocolate. There was a lot of chocolate in the rectory at Christmas. The layered, delicious boxes, arrived as gifts from parishioners. It was welcome booty.

Dad loved his glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry thirstily imbibed after the sermons, the prayers and the carols. Christmas dinner took up much of the afternoon. Mum was an excellent cook. We enjoyed the spectacle of brandy being poured over the Christmas pudding and that moment, after ignition, when it flamed before us. An elderly and dear pal called Kate used to join us for the feast. She had very poor sight but she relished the tastes and sounds, the cider and the silly jokes in the crackers.

I often miss the simplicity of those yuletide celebrations. Their rhythms were cocooned, deep and cherished. Our countryside Christmas was never perfect. Even some of our festive decorations were faded, but others were new and bright. Somehow its mixture was gloriously sufficient. And knowing this added lustre to its mid-winter sparkle. Along with the treats and gifts and sips of cider of course.

The big crowd churches…and the chocolate.

Lots of love,

Grace

Hanging around on film sets can be a mixed experience. Long hours in which one ‘may be needed’ and wonders if one can sneak off for a cup of tea. (I described this in my novel ‘Wise Follies.) However one sometimes has wonderful chats with other extras. There’s a playful delightfully weird side to it. It’s showbiz! (It can also be awesomely boring in places.) A number of the posher young men looked fabulous in their outfits. Some of those costumes are pretty sexy. There were some women in beautiful costumes too. Us peasants, however, were naturally blingless.

The food was good. Big fried breakfast and nice lunch. I had started wondering what lunch might contain shortly after I sat down on the bench type thing that was my seat for much of the day. (The chocolate pudding was excellent.) I sometimes wandered off to look at the impressive props. We were told when we were needed in our ‘positions’.

It was, of course, all a bit odd…in a nice way. We were asked to express various emotions. This was interesting and livened things up. Jonathan Rhys Meyers wasn’t there. I met him some years ago and he seems a very nice guy. It’s great that The Tudors TV series has been such a hit and it deserves to be. It is made with great dedication, care and expertise.

I was out of my peasant costume by about 6 p.m. Bus brought us back to studios and I got another bus home. Must collect bicycle from Ardmore parking lot someday soon.

Lots of love,

Grace

P.S. Have just received nice newsy mass ‘email’ from Gwyneth Paltrow and you can too if you log onto GOOP.

Stephen joked about Mark producing an egg. He hoped the offspring would be called after him. They both gazed at this dear and very rare creature with undisguised tenderness. Earlier on they had tramped through deep undergrowth looking for Kiwis. Last week they seemed besotted by newly hatched tiny turtles scampering towards the ocean…they were indeed very adorable. Stephen, it seems, has a big heart. That, combined with his many other attributes, makes him gorgeous. He is also delightfully honest. In one of the programmes he declared his dislike of camping. He missed so many things, including broadband. Even so he was prepared to rootle about in a large array of undergrowth for rare creatures.

When he and Mark were explaining some geographical and ecological matter using their breakfast fayre…toast featured prominently…Stephen drank his tea and apologised for having drunk the Indian Ocean.

One of the things that made this programme so special was that it was a fabulous alternative to the X Factor which would be so much nicer if it had more compassion, humour and warmth.

Lots of love,

Grace

Most of the clothes I am currently wearing were bought at charity shops…I have naturally enough bought my own underwear and the somewhat clumpy sandals are comfy and can be worn with thick striped socks. I have bought things in charity shops I wouldn’t have bought elsewhere…for example an unusually patterned pair of runners….they are decorated with dabs of pink, peach and light brown. They were designed by Roberto Cavalli and cost €7. An Oxfam bargain. They were probably pretty expensive on first purchase. I can easily imagine someone wearing them at a yachting marina in some distant and sunny place with palm trees….walking on a wooden jetty towards a waiting boat…tanned…younger than me…with blonde hair and silver bracelets. As I type this I can even hear the sound of the sea lapping against the boats and smell the salty breeze. Gulls hover in the air nearby. The distant aroma of a barbecue adds to the sense of summer. It is a luxurious atmosphere. No-one in the vicinity has needed to bargain hunt. But Oxfam introduced me to these shoes.

Funny how just one pair of unlikely shoes can evoke these images. A small detail is sometimes hugely significant in creative writing. Truth to tell I wonder if these shoes look odd when I wear them with, say, a largish blue jacket. It’s a bit like wearing an abstract painting. But I like that they exist. That I found them. They are very comfortable.

Later on I want to tell you about someone called Chuck.
But before that here is some info. about a workshop:

THE WRITING PROCESS’
SIX WORKSHOPS AT
THE IRISH WRITERS’ CENTRE

Course on Wednesdays from 10.30 – 12.30
September 23 to October 28, 2009

Facilitator Grace Wynne-Jones author of four critically acclaimed novels

These are playful and fun workshops that will empower your Inner Author and help you to identify what helps your own writing process. The workshops include practical tips on handling your inner critic, experimenting with story ‘nudges’, plot and character development and how not to be intimidated by technique. Stories are also written during the sessions and shared in a supportive and encouraging atmosphere. You will also receive input on marketing your work. Writing is an adventure! If you enjoy a good story you can write one! Facilitator Grace Wynne-Jones, author of four critically acclaimed novels. www.gracewynnejones.com

‘It was wonderful and got me writing again. ‘ Patricia O’Callaghan

The cost of this six week course is €165 If you want to book a place contact The Irish Writers’ Centre,
19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1 T: 01 872 1302 E: info@writerscentre.ie W: www.writerscentre.ie

Some reviews:
Ordinary Miracles has that rare combination of depth, honesty and wit…and all of this backed by a deliciously soft, gentle and loving humour…If you try one new author, try Grace Wynne-Jones. OK MAGAZINE

‘Grace Wynne-Jones has a wicked sense of humour which enlivens every page…Alice and her friends, and her hilarious magazine assignments, at times leave the reader rocking with laughter.’ THE IRISH TIMES re. ”Wise Follies’

‘…this is one of the best Irish novels this year…The trip to Greece is steeped in olives and jasmine, cicadas and sunshine…readers will love the local gigolo, Dimitri. Grace writes with great humour…On a more serious note, her portrayal of friendship, commitment and the complexity of relationships is very real and most enjoyable.’ EVENING HERALD re. ‘Ready Or Not?’

‘…..Grace Wynne-Jones has written an entertaining, intelligent and genuinely funny story….this is a great read, especially for commuters…guaranteed to shorten any journey.’ THE IRISH TIMES re. ‘The Truth Club’

Amazon Review R. Griffiths: Chick Lit With Depth ‘I have now read all of GWJ’s books and have been utterly impressed by every single one. I had never heard of her before I spotted one in my local market town shop and bought it on impulse. As with all chick lit (and all genres, let’s face it) there is always a formula somewhere but she writes with such feeling and insight that these are way over and above others of the same type. Certain elements crop up in all her books (windsurfing, budgies, biscuits and hands being just a few) but they flow beautifully, the settings are eloquent and the characters richly realised. Relationships are explored with genuine depth and humour and even if you’re not a fan of love winning out in the end you really wish you were. Most chick lit I can skim read, laugh out loud sometimes, know the ending and pass it on to someone else. Not these. These will remain on my book shelf and I will send them to others as newly purchased presents. Beautiful and more please.’

Okay, now back to more bloggy stuff:

Found myself fondly recalling a boy called Chuck. His surname was unusual and mildly flamboyant…won’t reveal it because not sure how accurate these recollections are. For example did I really look out the window that dutiful day and see him? I was sitting in a classroom. I was a teenager and at boarding school. Chuck, I seem to remember, was wearing tartan trousers…maybe even with golfing equipment somewhere near his person. He was American. Tall and lanky. He should have been in class…a more senior one. And wearing a navy uniform. But he was having a somewhat lively discussion with the headmaster instead. Had he actually driven his own car to the school grounds? A car was nearby. Waiting to whisk him off. Chuck had his own lifestyle going. He had preferences. He was a citizen of the world.
He swiftly departed and I don’t remember seeing him again. Thank you Chuck. You intrigued me. You had vavavoom.

When I arrived there, aged perhaps five or six, I had left another house. Another big rectory in the Irish countryside. I remember scampering excitedly through the new rooms with my brother Vere.. There was a bell in what we came to call the ‘Morning Room’. Had it been used to summon servants? Once we’d settled in its imperious buzzings were used to alert family members that an interesting programme was on the telly. For it was a big house. We could wander far from one another.

When I was little and had to go to bed before the others I sometimes felt I was almost in another country in my bedroom…so distant from the gathering in the Morning Room around the new contraption with its exciting black and white images of elsewhere. Dad kindly checked behind curtains and in the wardrobe. Under the bed too before he left to join the others after we’d said prayers together…he was a Church of Ireland clergyman. At one point a goat was included in my blessings.

I loved that home before I had given a name to love. When I was not versed in its arithmetic, though now the numbers seem more like stanzas. I was not always happy there. I remember sitting under a large writing desk and gazing solemnly out a window as I listened to a grown up argument…worrying about the shape of the words, their angles and velocity. I probably worried a great deal more than I remember. When my parents disagreed with each other it could become quite operatic. I didn’t understand the passion of it. The small histories. The infuriating compromises. I was young. And the house understood that. It asked nothing of me but to simply live there. To know its rooms and its eccentricities. Its spacious lush grounds. Its tall sheltering trees.

I have written about the house before, but not in this way. Not with with a wish to stop writing. To flee. And yet writing from the heart sometimes requires you to do this. To sit with the discomfort. To find out what needs to be known. To grieve. To reconstruct. To love again what seems to have been lost.

The house had a blue front door at the side of the building. I don’t remember how many stone steps…perhaps eight. The yale key was usually in the lock during daytime. There was a time when I had to stand on tip-toe to reach it. The house was surrounded by woodland. There was a gate at the top of the long driveway which was straight when seen from the road but curved and branched out closer to the house. During winter, when the trees were bare, only the rooftop could be glimpsed from the top gate. The white gate marked the inner territory of the house’s ‘grounds’. I sometimes used to swing on it, back and forth. It creaked companionably.

There was a walled garden which was largely overgrown, but still contained many apple trees. gooseberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants. A golden pheasant lived there in a large aviary type cage accompanied by less flamboyant members of his species.We had hens and bantams too kept overnight in various outhouses. I became acquainted with the smell of the fox and the need to rush out and shoo him away when the hens squawked for assistance.

My father kept bees even though he was frightened of them. Anytime he visited them he tended to sprint across the lawn shortly afterwards because a bee had found its way into his astronaut type headgear. It wasn’t one step for man. And it was many steps for my father. But we got nice honeycombs. Usually not the type you buy in shops. Partly filled but very satisfactory.

I loved the Morning Star river that flowed nearby. I spent a great deal of time paddling. Exploring. I remember constructing small dams in it with my brother Vere. Completely absorbed in our constructions like little beavers. He was the youngest of my four older brothers. Our raft never floated on the surface but was partially submerged…up to the ankles. I think it had once been a large wooden door. We enjoyed watching the river’s creatures. I was particularly impressed by the blue flash of the kingfisher.

These notes are so different in tone to the perky little messages I sometimes place in my blog. Notes about novels. Interesting websites. Cappuccinos savoured in cafes with a friend. Life seems to require a certain elasticity of us. Just now I am tempted to write that this is the true Grace sharing these words with you because they come from a deeper, dappled almost raw place…and yet we are all many selves. A writer soon discovers that. In many ways we are like music with its low, high and medium notes…our moderattos, flippancies and necessary spaces.

Even as a little girl in love with the old rectory and its lands, I began to dream of living abroad. I perused the Readers Digest and the National Geographic. Time magazine also found its way to us. It was, it seemed, a very big world. We had watched the moon landing in the Morning Room. One day I brought my pony Merrylegs in to watch a bit of telly too. Perhaps he might also want to know about the larger world. He was a black and white beauty given to me free gratis. I’m glad I didn’t know about his colourful past. He was a gentleman with me.

I left for boarding school at twelve and my pony was given back to his owner. Shortly afterwards he was put down. This was because he had Laminitis and could not be left out at grass for long periods. I mourned him and the rectory felt different. I was only there sometimes. There was much packing and leaving. Adjustments. The rhythm of belonging had altered. I did not want to miss the rectory too much. I did not want to love it anymore. I used hint of a tint shampoo and Badedas.. I was very keen on blue eyeshadow and the ads for Martini. I was an au pair in Switzerland one long hot sultry summer and had a romance, in French, with a young man called Serge.

When I said my goodbyes to the house before my parents left it I was living in London and in love. The house was sold and not long after that burned down. If you visited the place today you would never guess it had been there. There is no woodland, not a trace..the house has gone and the driveway. The top gate is still there leading to a field. I seem to recall the stable is still there. Has the walled garden gone too? I don’t remember. I revisited it briefly. But of course the river is still there. Flowing onwards as before.

What do we do with loss….where do we place it? Sometimes it is tempting to feel it will go away if we ignore it. If we arm ourselves with projects and plans. Lists. Workshops. Service. The world is a big place. Love is a huge word. This moment is where we live. And yet what we have loved and still love sometimes calls to us. The need to honour that tenderness. The habits of the heart.

My parents died some years ago. And the boy I played with, Vere, died in 2006. We shared a house together once. A home. We watched Wimbledon in the Morning Room.. He really liked Nastase. He sometimes listened to Top of the Pops on the transistor…walking through the fields with it.. And when I was a little girl he held my hand during a thunderstorm…he told me it was the angels singing.

I have rarely written about him in recent times. Not typed recollections anyway. I didn’t know what words to use. Instead I sometimes lit candles and stared at them. A little ritual that helped. For a while I almost forgot that I am a writer. And writing is a kind of home too. A place where you can take your sorrow and joy, your memories. And make something of them, like a builder.

I wonder who built our old home. The rectory. Who carefully placed those bricks and that mortar. The plasterwork. The floorboards. Who installed the huge windows with their wooden shutters. Thank you for the blue front door and its key. In memory it seems as real as it used to be. I can almost smell the baking in the kitchen. A dog curling itself affectionately around my legs. The gumboots near the door. The country coats on the stand. My father at his typewriter…tap tap tap…intent. His words somehow sailing forth to dance with these ones. In love…and with gratitude. In a place where all cherished things remain.

In order to follow my own advice about this I’ve decided to include a review in this blog. I came across a while ago and thought ‘that’s nice’. Then I forgot it. But now I realise how grateful I am for this encouragement. And how wonderful it was to learn, early this year, that very large quantities of my books had been borrowed in U.K. libraries. My books feel like friends, and I love to share them. So if you want to write too please do. It’s a journey. Getting published is a wonderful bonus. But every word you write from the heart is precious. The business side of writing is just that, a business. The soulful side of it can be so beautiful.

In beauty may you walk (from Navajo prayer).

‘Ready Or Not?’

Another bitter-sweet comedy of manners by popular Irish novelist and broadcaster, Grace Wynne-Jones, set mainly in today’s smart, rapidly changing Dublin, this amiable novel charts the follies, struggles and dreams of five people who, during one crazy summer, mature to a better understanding of themselves and what they really need.

It has a witty sense of the absurd, media-fed images which haunt the young professionals, yet its trigger is a photograph capturing a deep and devastating truth. A major motif is that gap between an older generation, whose conventional roots restrain them from communicating even with one another, and their ‘freer’ young – a gap which Caddy’s mother tries to bridge with injudicious matchmaking and gits of Irish linen.

This is probably rightly seen as a woman’s novel (not an adolescent’s, despite the gooey, pastel cover!). The friendship between warm, wary Caddy and apparently cynical Roz is at its heart, but the character and feelings of Tom are perceptively explored, although the idealised Dan is only really seen through the eyes of others.

The new choices and patterns of relationships available to the metropolitan young, which seem to separate the generations, are revealed as superficial. Love was not straightforward in any age, and, perhaps loving is not so different either – not a matter of sexual skills but of ‘small civilities’ and the capacity to imagine what it is like to be the other. Grace Wynne-Jones has a good ear for plausible dialogue, but her rarer gift is the ability to be very funny without her characters losing sympathy or credibility.

Caroline Clark
www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Lots of love,

Grace

P.S. You can read more reviews re. my books at the book icons at the top of this page.