 Red Room Writer Profile
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Lucy Coats's Blog
September 11, 2009
- I'm wearing it now. My mother's aquamarine engagement ring. She gave it to me when my daughter was born, just as she gave me, on my son's birth, the amethyst ring my father presented her with on the occasion of my own. But you see, it's not really her engagement ring. It's the replacement. And what she doesn't know is the story behind that. How could she? I've never told her. And I ...
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September 1, 2009
- There's a sequel by someone else to one of your favourite children's books. It's sitting there on the shelf, calling to you with a siren whisper. "Now you can find out WHAT HAPPENED NEXT. C'mon, you KNOW you want to." But do you? Do you really? Just published is Hilary McKay's answer to Frances Hodgson Burnett's 'A Little Princess', called 'Wishing For Tomorrow'. I've ordered it, but ...
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August 27, 2009
- The first written code of manners could be said to be found in the 10 Commandments. Leaving aside the religious exhortations, it is basic politeness not to covet your neighbour's wife, or ox (Ferrari) or ass (VW Golf) or any of his material possessions. Adultery with the neighbour's (or anyone else's) wife is pretty low on the bad manners front--and as for murder, well there's not many ruder acts ...
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August 26, 2009
- Helena Bonham-Carter is to play Enid Blyton in a new BBC4 series this autumn. I'm sure it will be fascinating (for some) to find out what a bad mother she was to her two girls, and other salacious details about her life, and to relate those things to the literary merit or otherwise of her books.I don't like this trend. Increasingly, it seems to me, in the light of recent revelations, that there ...
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August 22, 2009
- Writers are scattered, solitary creatures by nature, holing up all over the country (and beyond) to do their job of wrangling words in small, cramped sheds and offices, sitting in lonely state at cafe tables, or huddling against the radiators in hushed libraries. Don't feel sorry for us. We like it like that. But sometimes, just sometimes, the urge for the company of our own kind comes upon us, ...
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June 9, 2009
- I came across the WildInk blog a couple of days ago, and very much liked the new haikus I found there. Haiku is one of my favourite forms of poetry. To condense so much feeling and atmosphere into so few words is an art--and a difficult one. I have never managed to write one to my own complete satisfaction, but I shall keep trying. It is an art worth working at.As a student I remember marvelling ...
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June 8, 2009
- Ingredients for the perfect reading tree: 1 climbable tree;1 cushion;1 comfortable fork with branch footstool and trunk backrest;1 unputdownable book;enough green leaves to hide under. These days I prefer a slung hammock, but when I was (shall we say more agile?) climbing trees with a book was my perfect escape from weeding the strawberry beds, or lugging bales of straw and slopping buckets of ...
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June 4, 2009
- Beeches are the quintessential Hampshire tree, and, if I am honest, my favourite. Spring for me is epitomised by the sight of that first mild sunshine of April shining through the new tender leaves of beech, slightly indented at the edges and still with the fur of their birth upon them. I love the smoothness of their greeny silver trunks, and the way their roots buckle and rear out of the earth ...
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June 2, 2009
- Sometimes serendipity brings a book into my life which opens the door to memory. Such a book lately has been Roger Deakin's Wildwood: a Journey Through Trees, which I discovered, quite by chance, in an Oxford bookshop on my mother's 84th birthday. Roger was a remarkable man--among other things a founder of Common Ground (which links nature and the environment with culture)--whom the Guardian ...
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May 28, 2009
- The sun is shining and the trees are green, the birds are singing, and the Wanton Toast Eater has nearly finished building his pizza oven. Ah. Maybe I didn't tell you about that yet.A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far far away......Well, nearly. Early last year the Wanton Toast Eater's best mate, Dr Grumpy, watched rather too much Jamie Oliver At Home. The result, some time later was first ...
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May 26, 2009
- Last August I wrote a blog entitled 'Poetry in Peril?' in which I bemoaned the fact that children no longer learn the best of our past poetry by heart. None of my doing, but this has, of course, now been remedied by the BBC's current excellent poetry season, most notably by their 'Off By Heart' competition, the final of which was screened last Friday. One of the judges of that competition was ...
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May 1, 2009
- "Imagine, if you will, a handful of families in Africa at the very beginning of the Human Race," said the BBC trailer. So I did. Inconceivable, really that that small group should have engendered the billions who live on the earth today. But it set me to wondering (as I occasionally do) about another thing entirely. Who told the first story? And when? We know that our early ancestors ...
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April 18, 2009
- Car Park There are aliens out there.Out there in the real worldof the car park.Pushing pushchairs full of baby,talking,laughing,connecting fragmented wordsinto living. I do not now understandor rememberhow to be part of all that.I.I, who sit trappedand time-wastingin a blue box full of black plastic,waiting. Behind the slanted grey glassall the alien worldcan see me.See me weepingslow salty ...
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April 7, 2009
- The middle-aged (in my case) Self is made up of layer upon layer of years of experiences both good and bad, of memory and love, joy and sorrow, things seen and heard and felt, places visited, people met, home and family and friends, health, illness, death, birth and everything else which makes up the exciting art of living . Each Self, whatever its age, is unique and precious in all its quirks, ...
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March 21, 2009
- The hawthorn hedges have, in a week, changed from a barrier of dry, rustling twigs to a living green glory of unfolding small notched leaves. The catkins are dropping pollen in a drifting golden haze which, in my case, provokes reddened eyes and hideous sneezing attacks. All over the garden and surrounding countryside are green pokings through the soil, bud swellings, joyous, manic birdsong at ...
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