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Category Archives: Things

January Blues

12 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by la Clarina in Things

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beginnings, January, new year, resolutions

I’ve been neglecting my blogs in the most dreadful manner, lately. Can it be that I haven’t posted in five weeks? That I’ve even forgone the customary Christmas wishes? Oh dear me! The fact is, December was the tiniest tad intense – what with A Christmas Carol and handing in Tom Walsingham’s Book 3…

Then Christmas came – and then… January.

Because, really – I don’t know about you, but I rather loathe January… Continue reading →

The kids

17 Thursday Nov 2022

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre, Things

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drama classes, Nellie Bly, School play, schoolchildren

They are about fourteen, a baker’s dozen of them or so, and ever so slightly miffed, because they had to give up an hour of sports to have me talk to them. The fact is, they are taking extra-curricular drama classes this year, and they’ll be staging a shortened version of my own Nellie Bly play at the end – so the teachers thought it a good idea to have the author discuss the play with the class. Continue reading →

All those words!

10 Thursday Nov 2022

Posted by la Clarina in Scribbling, Things

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Historical fiction, Historical Thesaurus of English, Language, University of Glasgow

Among the many wonders of the Internet, there is the huge abundance of dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses, lexicons, and such-like beautiful things.

I’ve always loved dictionaries of all sorts, old and new, and own shelves of them, and since a young age I’ve been known to ask Saint Lucia for the occasional dictionary as a gift… Apart from the obvious use, I just love to get lost among those columns of words, to make discoveries, to go on treasure hunts, to chase the elusive nuance of a meaning… Continue reading →

Stamps

18 Thursday Aug 2022

Posted by la Clarina in History, Stories, Things

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Andrew Crumey, Donald Evans, make-believe, Pfitz, postage stamps, Stamp collecting

StampDo you have any particular liking for postage stamps, o Readers? I don’t, I must say.

My father was a stamp collector. When I was very young, he tried to share the hobby with me – and failed. All I remember are endless sessions sitting at a table covered in green felt, being scolded for breathing too hard on the silly little paper squares… Continue reading →

Of human mind and motivation

12 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by la Clarina in Scribbling, Things

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motivation, writing

Such a lofty title, isn’t it? Very, very lofty for a post arguing that the human mind is, in several ways, an easily amused little hamster. Mine is, at least, and I’ll wager that yours is too – in several way – when it comes to motivation. Continue reading →

Then came the plague

28 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by la Clarina in Scribbling, Things

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Covid-19, deadlines, The Tom Walsingham Mysteries, writing, writing schedule

I’d somehow managed to dodge it for more than two years and a half, but at last the plague caught me – or, in other word, I caught Covid at last. I suppose it was just a matter of time – and that I caught it at the theatre was just as inevitable as it was fitting.

Last Friday, more or less from one moment to the next, I found myself with a very sore throat and a temperature above 39° C. Within hours a rather fierce cough and a cold joined the company – and there I was. Continue reading →

The Puccini moment

02 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre, Things

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drama school, La Bohème, Opera, Puccini, theatre

Last Sunday we had the second – and last – performance of the school play for the Third – and last – Course. It went really well, and I’m truly happy and proud of ‘my’ pupils and the work we’ve done together. The’re a fine group. I’ll miss them.

That said, of the whole hectic, glittering week, there is one moment that I want to remember, the sort of thing that, when it happens, makes you stop and think that “Oh, how book-like!” Continue reading →

Form and substance

06 Friday May 2022

Posted by la Clarina in Things

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form and substance, shakespeare, technique, theatre, writing

It mostly comes in two flavours.

Flavour the first: now and then, when I hyperventilate over some (more or less) minute detail gone wrong in a play, a story, a talk, or whatnot, some sympathetic soul will try to convince me that it was a negligible hitch in the form – but the substance was there, and substance is what truly matters…

Continue reading →

The times, such as they are

25 Friday Feb 2022

Posted by la Clarina in History, Things

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Ukraine, war

We write to a deadline, we drive to Town and back, we run around rehearsing the next play, we listen to the news, we bake sweets, we take the cat at the vet’s and discuss geopolitics in the waiting room, we watch from the window the first wood-pigeon drinking in the pond – back from wherever it is they go to winter – we hunt for that one missing prop, we listen to more news, we worry about friends over there – who live with their bags packed up in the hall, ready to run at a moment’s notice – and we wonder how all this will read in history books, a century or two from now. We write on, we muse on crumbling empires, we marvel at the flowers of an early spring, we go through rehearsing schedules on the phone, we shake our heads in disbelief at the TV set, we hire on for big translation jobs, we frankly have no idea what will happen next, we go on writing, and we just can’t help the thought: by the time the deadline comes, what will the world look like?

Londons

13 Thursday Jan 2022

Posted by la Clarina in History, Things

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Agas map, Braun and Hogenberg, Horwood's Plan, Know Your London, London, Romantic London

Oh, I don’t know…

This is in part because, after two years, I’m very much missing London. And besides, I’m working on Book 2 of the Tom Walsingham Mysteries, so I’m up to my ears in research…

Do you mind if I share a few lovely things I’ve found? Continue reading →

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