Write On!

Well I'm on my way! I've been working all summer on polishing the content of my creative writing workshops I'm now offering for "profit" here on the Costa del Sol. I've also been developing this logo with an internet logo company and a marketing strategy. So here's the logo, what do you think? I've included both languages since two of my workshops I offer in Spanish as well. If you go to http://writeoncostadelsol.blogspot.com/ you can see the workshop summaries.

This morning I was on one of our local radio stations in English for a full 30 minutes talking about why I've developed these particuliar workshops and my objective of awakening people's creativity and encouraging more people to write for pleasure. Plus we talked about the kids' creative writing workshops I did this summer, one in Spanish and one ine English. It was harder than I thought it was going to be to get the kids' imaginations going and ignite their creativity. I think it's because we don't let kids get bored these days, and often creativity comes from boredom! Try letting yourself get bored, then write!

Next objective: get the publicity out in the local English press, and distribute flyers to the local English speaking clubs and social centres. Wish me luck!

Writers at work! A picture from a lunch break at a two day workshop "Winter Write" I did with a few fellow writers last Feb. Keep your eyes out for a new weekend workshop this year in the Mijas hills over loooking the Med!

The Catalba Tree - The Bean Tree

My grandmother had a catalba tree behind her house, near the back door. I always called it the bean tree, and didn't actually know it's name until I re-read Prodigal Summer by Barabra Kingslover this month.

It stands in my memory as the shade and respite from the hot days that often speckled upstate New York (Amsterdam) summers. Under it we snapped beans for freezing, pealed cucumbers for pickles, pealed corn for supper, played aggravation to alleviate the boredom, or simply collapsed on our backs after hard play for rest and coolness. My mind would drift around its rugged bark, up to its hanging bean pods, through its huge heart shaped leaves, to the filtered blue of the sky; not thinking about anything except the intimate details of that tree. Subconsciously the surrounding smells of cut grass, ripened petunias, old wood, freshly turned dirt, roses, imprinted on my mind. The sounds of bees in clover, flies buzzing, a lone car whirring around the curve, the pressure cooker from the open kitchen window, became permanently recorded in my inner senses. When I smell those things, when I hear those sounds, I am once again 11 years old laying under that bean tree dreaming, drifting, feeling, simply just being.

Oh to return to that house, that tree, to those simple summer days when simply just being was just fine.

TEA - Weekend Wordsmith

Tea, a cup of tea, a cuppa: it all reminds me of the differences between the English and the American. Here on the Costa del Sol, which is like the Florida of Europe, the English make up a large part of our local population. Over the past 6 years I have worked side by side with many English at the only privately run Cancer Hospice in Spain, started by an English woman obvously, and I have been introduced to a culture and language quite unlike my American own.

The English drink Tea, most like it quite strong and stick to the standard tea we might call English Breakfast. Some may drink the different varities offered by Twinings in those lovely tins, but most like their plain, but full flavored (excuse me flavoured) PG Tips which come in round packets instead of square bags with a tag on the end. Everyone has an electric kettle that plugs in and boils water in about 25 seconds so they can get their tea fix in record time. As much as those dainty, flowered tea cups and pots are depicted in typically English scenes, it's definitely the mugs, just like our coffee mugs, that people enjoy their tea fix in.

Now don't get me wrong, they also drink coffee, but after a meal, or mid morning while sitting at an outdoor cafe people watching and usually they accompany it with a brandy. Now that gets me to another English insight. Boy can they drink! At social gatherings they usually out drink me 2 or 3 to one. Most of them don't seem a bit affected either. Now mind you, I do see the weaving, slurring, inebriated tourist on occasion, and am always amazed to see they are often retirement age. Beer and ale by the pints, wine of all colours and origins, gin tonics, scotch, brandies, champagne, boy do they go for champagne, you name it, they consume it in large quantities.

They spell their words differently: colour, organise, realise, favourite,

They use their words differently too: A jumper is a sweater, a lorry is a truck, the bin is the garbage, bin it is throw it out, do the washing up is do the dishes, pudding is desert, car park is parking garage, the boot is the trunk, the bonnet is the hood, brilliant doesn't mean somebody is extremely smart it means someone or something is fantastic, lift is elevator, cue is line, shag means have sex, a biscuit is a cookie, aubergine is eggplant and courgette is zuchinni, have you got? means do you have?, and everyone is darling, love, mate or pet. You get the idea...And don't get me started on pronunciation.....pardon me, could you repeat that please.

So love, go fix yourself a lovely cuppa and have a brilliant time having a go at TEA as the Weekend Wordsmith on your blog. It beats the tele or going to the cinema.

Longings

I've been absent for awhile, longing to get back, but fearing the return to getting lost in this magical world and loosing track of time: time which must be spent motheirng, wifing, (do you like that word I just made up?) developing and marketing my new professional endeavors for the fall, completing the volunteer project I'm involved in, keeping life and a household of four in order, fed and on an even keel.

Oh for those single, selfish days, when the first and mostly only one that mattered was me. I could do what I wanted when I wanted and nobody was waiting for me to hurry up and finish to dedicate some part of me to them; to resolve a problem, prepare or repair something, take them somewhere, or simply spend time and attention on them. I wouldn't change it for the world, but it does bring up these occasional longings to swim into a selfish, single life for a season or two.