Wash Your Mind Clean

Last week I finally used up my Christmas vouchers from my lovely in-laws. (Yes, I'm one of those lucky people who married a really great family.) They were for Floatworks, the Southwark centre where you'll find small rooms full of Bond-like pods where you can float for an hour at a time and feel... different.
On a daily basis, I feel as if I start too many things and never end them. I always carry a notebook and a pen with me for when I have ideas and I'm afraid I might forget them. I draw clothes I want to sew or knit, jewellery to make, list chapters for books, ideas for blogs, places to visit and all the normal chores that really ought to get them done at some point in between the interesting stuff. All these ideas are stuffed in, popping up constantly shouting for attention and in need of an outlet. I could do with an office full of assistants. I've got a laptop and a small cat. Unless I keep up the yoga, and particularly the pranayama practise (controlled yoga breath) my head feels like fireworks exploding over a race track on saloon car afternoon, complete with crashes.
So how lovely it is to slow everything down, rinse out the ideas and feel as though I've wiped the slate, giving myself space for new, clean, clear thoughts.
You float in 10" of water, at body temperature, that's full of Epsom salts. It supports your body so you feel as if you're in space. Press one button and the lid closes. Press the next and the light goes off. The music fades out after a few minutes and you've got sensory deprivation. There was one thing I could feel; the cat had scratched my hand and left a tiny graze, enough for the Epsom salts to drive me bonkers with irritation. I flapped about a little while I found the buttons to put the lights back on and open the lid so I could find the packet of petroleum jelly to cover the scratch and protect it. Back in the box I let myself go. I once tried pranayama breathing in a pod but it didn't work. Concentrating on controlling my breath held me back from the deep relaxation you feel if you give in entirely to whatever thoughts fill your head, and then gradually roll away into nothingness.
The music starts again to remind you that it's time to get out. Only 10 minutes! I was robbed. Except that it had been an hour.
I remember a few things. Ideas for a set of short stories. A song about working in an office. A design for wrapping paper. All these things floated into my head. Many others floated off again without distracting me at all. If you don't fancy being shut in a pod the shape of a huge egg, you can keep the lid open. If you're afraid of the dark, you can leave the light on. They'll play music for you if you prefer a bit of background noise. In generally the world divides into those who can't wait to give it a crack and others who hyperventilate just thinking about 1) being naked in salty water 2) being shut in a pod 3) doing nothing for an hour. If you don't fancy it, sod off and stay away and don't make it difficult for the rest of us to get a slot. You just go for a walk in the nice sunshine while we shut ourselves off from the world and its noisesmelllightweightpainwork.

Will I do it again? I just booked myself three-for-the-price-of-two and I can't wait. OK, I'll tell you: www.floatworks.com.

When Marketing Goes Bonkers

One plain white facecloth

I bought a packet of plain white facecloths to take off my mascara because I was tired of throwing out cotton wool. (So very ungreen.) The label did make me laugh though.
Exclusive of Decoration.
Exclusive of Ornamentation.
It says.
How bonkers is that?
I bought them because they were plain white cloths. I could see they were plain white clothes. I didn't need to be reassured that they were free of adornment so why did they write that?


The world of marketing has started to use what's missed out as a way to convince buyers that it's great to buy their products. This started as a good thing: "no added sugar" written on fruit bars to compare them with less healthy versions, "no animal ingredients" for vegan food. After that, once people got accustomed to the idea that "no added" meant "this is a good thing" then marketers started to make meaningless "no added" statements as reasons to buy stuff. As a person who's been trained in marketing, and even used to teach it, I find this shamefully lacking in creativity.

When marketing people can't be bothered to think of something good to say, they make up something that sounds as if it might be bad, then boast that their product doesn't have it. E numbers. Have marketing people convinced you that E numbers are bad? The E means that they have been tested for safety and approved by the EU. It's when a number doesn't have an E that it's dodgy. Safe natural colours and flavours all have E numbers. Safe synthetics do too. Implying that a product is better because it doesn't have something that's harmless is wicked and lazy.

Although in the case of plain white facecloths, it's so ridiculous it's also quite funny.

Free Tuesdays

Observing the Secular Sabbath

It's not my own phrase; I stole it from Jonathan Meades, who was on BBC2 last night in a programme about Scotland and how it's the world's leader in the ancestor business. Or rather, I borrowed it, because it reminded me of a visit to Frinton two years ago.

Mr. 4160 and I spent our wedding anniverary at the seaside in Essex, taking in an ice cream and a wander around lovely little Frinton. Estate agents' windows advertised many small homes with well kept gardens and "no onward chain". Frinton has the smallest church in England (or perhaps Essex) but anyway it's tiny. We went in, as Frinton is the sort of place where churches don't need to lock their doors to keep out undesirables. There aren't any. For the first time in ages I read the Ten Commandements which were painted in gold on wood in Arts & Crafts style, and was struck by very reasonable they are.

That said, I looked them up and found that there are more than ten (27) and that the good old Church of England had decided just to keep the sensible ones. ("The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb" sounds a bit parochial to me. Likewise the bit about driving out the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. No-one else? Just them, the locals? One can't help thinking that there was some artistic interpretation of the Lord's instructions going on there.)

Back to Frinton and leaving out the spare 17 commandments. As it was my first weekend off in as many as I could remember, I lingered over "Observing the sabbath and keep it holy". I do know a few people who regularly go to church, and when they tell their employers that they can't work on Sundays, that's fine. If the rest of us say that we can't work on Sunday because we've just worked Monday to Saturday and we're exhausted, that's not good enough. So for the following few months a colleague and I had a code. "Off to church on Sunday?" "Yeah, I need to do a bit of bible study." How ridiculous is it, that you have to pretend to go to church just to get a bit of peace and quiet, a nice day pottering about doing nothing and having a cup of tea with your mates?

So there was Jonathan Meades, standing in a dull, drizzly, empty, silent street on a small Scottish Island, having a similar thought. Have we made our lives better by opening shops, cafes and entertainments on Sundays so that it's become normal to work all weekend? Or if we're not working, we're dashing around catching up with things we used to do in our lunch hour (remember that?) or when we got home and still had an evening. It's September; I ought to have the back to school, ready to start the new term kind of feeling. But after working through all but two weekends of yet another summer, feeling all worn out, I need a day off occasionally.

I can't do it alone. I can't just put my foot down and decide that it's just me. Now everyone has to be seen to work hard or else they let the team down. If I don't work on Sundays I'll be holding up a load of people who are waiting for my contribution. Collectively we've got ourselves into this state by willingly taking on extra work to see if we can earn more, get on, make progress, be rewarded financially for all the additional effort we voluntarily throw in. We've got emails that chase us home and follow us around the world on our iPhones. We're kidding oursleves that we're doing it because we want to, because it gives our life meaning. I get more meaning from picking my home grown raspberries or knitting a pair of socks.

It never ends unless we decide to end it. At least the rich Victorian mill owners gave their half-starved underpaid workers a day to go to church with the promise that they'd get their rewards in heaven. We're still falling for it, except that we're told we'll get our rewards paid on earth, in a sense of fulfillment that only comes from accepting a challenge and pushing oursleves until we hurt. And we've fallen for it. We're going to have to take our secular sabbath back ourselves. The non-stop generation needs to put its brakes on. So you can use my code if you like. Tell your colleagues that you have to go to church on Sunday then make it your own personal church. Get the papers in, put your feet up and have a chat. You don't have to achieve anything. Achievement is overrated. Just sit. Wait. Ponder. Listen to things you haven't heard in ages. Remember. Imagine.

I'll be going to church on Tuesdays. Come with me. Bring your knitting. I'll get the kettle on. We can have a bit of a natter and see if any brilliant ideas happen to crop up.

PS. The picture. I took that out of the front window one evening Sunday after sitting on the sofa for ages waiting for the right moment.

Free Fruit:

Free Fruit:
Go forth and find it.
For the past few weeks I've been out for a couple of hours each weekend to a patch of wild parkland near the canal in Hanwell, London W7. First it was the blackberries, then the plums, and last weekend more plums - 14lb of them - plus a few straggling brambles, a bag of apples and aother of pears which were just ripe enough to cook. This week, if it's not too wet, I'll get back to the pear tree (you have to clamber under the hawthorn tree tunnel but it's not impossible, just a bit of a challenge.

To be surrounded by more fruit that I could carry, without even having to stretch up on tiptoes, filled me with such fundamental happiness that it took me a while to calm down and start picking. Spending Bank Holiday Monday evening in the kitchen, turning it all into crumble base, puree, compote and finally, by Tuesday lunchtime, fruit leathers, was one of the simple pleasures that you hear people talking about theoretically but find difficult to pin down. So if it's not raining, and you have a patch of wild land nearby (or you know someone with a fruit tree in the garden) go grab some.

Cooking it is not hard. Put a small amount of water in a pan (1cm or so) with a load of fruit and a some sugar if you like. Put the lid on and stick them over a very low heat until it's all gone soft. Watch it or it'll bubble over and put sticky red goo all over your oven. (Did that.) Eat it. You can do exciting things with it involving pastry, syllabubs, sauces or savouries. Be as inventive as you like. In modern life we've lost the plot when it comes to remembering what really makes us content; harvesting is one of the good guys.

Shanks's Pony

I wonder if you've heard about the Nun Study, Dr. David A. Snowdon's research into aging. It's the most wonderful long-term observation into what might happen to us as we get older, carried out amongst a whole convent full of Catholic nuns in Minnesota. What's unusual about it is that all the nuns eat the same food and have accurate, comparable health records from a young age so researchers can rule out a lot of the variables that normally mess up your average health study.

One of the correlations (becasue it's tricky to say what's actually cause and effect) is that people who walk three miles a day stay healthy long into old age. Current research reckons that longevity is influenced up to 75% by behaviour and attitude, not genetics, by the way. Since I found that out, I've tried to grab the opportunity to walk rather than take a lazier way of getting around whenever I have the time. It's selfishness really: naturally I want to stay fit for as long as I can manage, but I also find that walking has instant benefits for creative thinking. (Yoga too, but that's another story.)

For starters, on foot you have more time to notice what's happening around you. (You can choose not to; I have a friend who always strolls, deep in thought, staring at the pavement with his mind elsewhere.) If you like, you can observe people, buildings, clouds, spaces, faces, your neighbours' front gardens and your own reactions to them. When I'm stuck, really stuck, I love to go for a walk. Even just walking a slightly different route from usual can get you out of your rut. I've got six different direct routes to my tube station and I do like to vary them just for the fun of it; it's a Edwardian working man's suburb - lots of parallel streets.

Time is a bit of a nuisance - well, absence of time to be more accurate - but if I'm on my way to a meeting or a workshop that's going to need me to delve into my deepest thinking resources, then I like to allow time to get there on Shanks's pony. (Grandma's term for legs.) It really does clear your mind of rubbish and fill it with interesting things - if you allow it, and put a bit of effort it.

My great grandmother made the local papers when she walked three miles to a party aged 92 then refused a lift home and hoofed it all the way back again. I'm rather hoping to follow in her footsteps, so to speak. In the meantime, for a good spring clean of the mental cobwebs, I shall be walking whenever... Machines in gyms don't work by the way. That's not one of Dr. Snowdon's conculsions; that's just what I think. They might help your health, but they don't refill your inspiration tanks.

The kit: for a formal event: Paul Smith brogues. They take a few months to break in then they are like walking on clouds, leathers ones. Informal around town: I've not found a walking shoe to beat my Nike Shox. Muddy: Merrell. Fields: barefoot but watch for cowpats. I've done that. Heels, if you must: Cole Haan G-Series with Nike Air technology. People tell me that Crocs are comfortable, but I wouldn't be seen dead, darlings.

Use it up, wear it out

A few years back, I decided to give up buying things I didn't need for a year long project. I defined need pretty strictly; you can't just say to yourself, "Well I really need a pair of pair of red shoes," when the ones you already own will do. The problem was that I wasn't ready. I was still searching for things I wanted with which to torture myself and I fought the self-imposed restriction, like a dieter who craves biscuits. It's rather like when a new student turns up at a yoga class and says excitedly, "I've given up smoking." It's usually about three weeks before they lapse. If you think that giving up anything - chocolate, tobacco, alcohol or shopping, or even breaking up a relationship - is exciting, then your heart isn't in it. You think about it all the time; it still has its hooks in you and it will reel you back in.

I mention this because I've stopped shopping again but this time I didn't have a start date; I just noticed that it had happened. I found myself not wanting to buy stuff because I slowly realised that I own more things than I need already. I've enough books to read, as many notebooks as I need to write several books and take notes at all the meetings between now and the end of my career, 20 fountain pens and ink enough to fill them. I'm still drawn to lovely new things, but instead of allowing my acquisitive desires to envelop me I've started to remind myself of all the beautiful things I already own. When I want to give myself a present, I don't have to buy one; I can open the box I keep my stash of special things in. Yoga helps, by the way, although you have to have the right attitude to it; I've met people who just become yoga addicts instead. What I really want more of is floorspace so now I'm spending time selling things on eBay and giving them away on Freecycle.

And I mention that because this is where the 4160 Tuesday come in. When you realise you've collected enough writing paper to send thankyou letters to all your aunts, nieces, nephews and minor acquaintainces until all your 4160 Tuesdays are over, it's time for a rethink.

I've an idea that the constraints of using up what I already own will inspire me to creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. Let's be fair though; I do still have an awful lot of stuff; when I moved flats once, I sent through my list of belongings - musical instruments, boxes of books, fabric, yarn, sewing machines, yoga kit - and the removals company asked, "Is it a school?"

It's fair to say that I'm quite good at shopping; I give guided tours around London's most beautiful shops to visitors from overseas. But isn't it better to spend time creating than acquiring? Instead of opening my craft cupboard doors and wondering when I'm going to get the time to use up all the stuff inside, I'm going to take something out and make it into something else. (Yes, I have a craft cupboard.) Remember this, friends, aunts, nephews and minor acquaintances, when you get a pair of handknitted socks for Christmas.

(The picture: I uploaded it, changed my mind and tried to take it out again, but failed. I know it's not a masterpiece but it was my first attempt at wet-on-wet watercolour and as it does look a bit like a cyclamen and I did enjoy doing it, here it is.)

Crystal Balls for Business Writers

"Now that we've all gone casual and chatty when we write," said Mr. 4160 last night, "what do you think will be next? Going serious and using masses of jargon?"

So I had a bit of a think.

Based on what happens in writing workhops - the ones I've been in; I can't speak for the others - I'd predict that we're going to be tidying up our English. At every workshop I've run, I've told everyone that they are not in a grammar class and no-one's going to start lecturing about accuracy; on the other hand, when you're in a room full of people who write for a living, and no-one's going to judge you if you've got a question, it's probably a good time to air your worries. I might ask, opening the shutters a little, "Where would you use brackets and where would you use dashes?" Then it all pours out: semi-colons, it's and its, different to, than or from. Just like which knife and fork to start with, it's not life and death, but people want to do it right.

In my experience, there are two groups of people who say they don't care about where apostrophes go. The first: people with masters degrees in languages, literature or linguistics. The second: the deeply insecure who hate being taught and disliked the way they were forced to learn at school.
Greengrocers care deeply where apostrophes go; they just get it wrong.

The first group talk about the Greengrocers' Apostrophe, the one that turns up in "Apple's £1 a basket" or "Fresh farm egg's". There is a common misunderstanding that apostrophes go in plurals, which they don't if you follow the generally accepted, current guidelines. The outstandingly educated people I know put it all into historical context and talk about the evolution of language; if that's the way the common man writes, then that is the way the language will go. Mind you, they wouldn't be seen dead with their own apostrophes out of place. (For the best ever discussion about this read David Foster Wallace in Consider the Lobster.)

The second group never seem to mind if their spelling is corrected. It's fine for spelling to be unequivocally right or wrong (although any research into Mr. Shakespeare's or Miss Austen's original works might change their minds) but questioning their grammar and punctuation is like suggesting they work on improving their dancing, driving or sexual techniques.

Nope, I think that the greengrocers do care. Why else would they bother to put them in at all? There's a beautiful mix up I've seen in a cafe window: Tea's, Coffees and Breakfast's. What was it that went through the mind of the signwriter as he or she wrote it? What is it about coffees that makes it exempt?

That picture was in New Look's window in York this summer. Gladiator sandals was £20. Did no-one ever say, "Ahem, shouldn't we say "were" because there's more than one sandal?" Not one person? In the whole approval process from concept to window, everyone thought it was fine to write was instead of were? I'll tell you who would have kicked up a fuss, anyone French, German, Spanish or Italian who had learned English at school. One of my foreign colleagues recently asked me why a native English speaker had made a particular mistake and the best answer I could give at the time was, "He's doing his very best but he's not as well educated as you are." Rude, I know, but what would you say?

For me, taking time to check that your writing says what you mean is simple politeness. You are hoping that someone will read it and understand it, then act on it. New Look were hoping that people would buy the sandals; the cafe wants to sell breakfasts and they probably will. Only the most severe of Trussites would punish errors by withholding their business.
If you want to check that your writing is clear, pass it to someone else to read out loud; if they trip over the words, then it needs more work. BBC newsreaders say they can read anything, live with no rehearsal, as long as it's been punctuated correctly.

For me, getting it right it not about the writer and his or her ego, their past education, their concerns about where they fit into the class system, authenticity or any of the other excuses I've heard. It's about being considerate, kind and polite.

It's like deciding whether or not to use the indicators when you're driving or sticking your arms out when you're cycling. It's making your intentions clear to others so that they can make a decision based on what you are telling them. If you can't be bothered to give clear signals, whether they are hands, flashing lights or semi-colons, then you are being inconsiderate. If you're misunderstood it's your own silly fault.

Life's too short to waste time explaining yourself twice. Once is bad enough.
If you'd like to check the guidelines go for the Penguin Writer's Manual. It's small, light, cheap and easy to read. It sheds light where there is darkness.

Incidentally, Word's built in grammar checker quite often gets it wrong.

If you'd like to come to one of our workshops, get in touch.
If you'd like us to run one at your organisation, same applies.

Writing workshops coming up. Want to come too?
We'll be at the Swedenborg Society in Bloomsbury on 25th September, 23rd October and 20th November, Fridays all.
Do say if you'd like to come along. (They're extraordinarily good value, full of practical and inspiring ways to keep you writing even on your blank paper days, and make you even better at it.
We also have very good biscuits.
We'll be in a fascinating setting with equally fascinating people and you'll bounce out at the end of the session full of good ideas.

On perfume. (It’s not Tuesday, I know, but I was busy.)

The word inspiration also means breathing in...

When I was a kid, women had one bottle of perfume and wore it on special occasions. You put it on after your best clothes and your earrings. You dabbed it on occasionally until it had turned into something that looked lovely but smelled a bit like vinegar. (We didn't know in those days that scent deteriorated in daylight so our mums would take it out of the packaging and stand it on their dressing tables to impress visitors.)

My mother had one bottle of Chanel No.5 that my French pen-friend's family had given me to bring back to Geordieland for her. It was massive. There is stood on the modernist dressing table, decomposing nicely until it smelled foul, but as we didn't know what Chanel No. 5 was supposed to smell like, she wore it anyway.

For an ordinary Sunday tea with friends or coffee at a smart cafe, you'd wear Avon or Lentheric that someone had got you for your birthday.

When I was 16 I bought my first bottle of proper scent. We were in Dundee, at a department store; we were holiday nearby. I'd just sat my exams and was about to go into sixth form, sufficiently grown up, I'd decided, to wear a beautiful fragrance. I'd saved up; I had cash. Looking back, I appreciate that the saleswoman was very kind to me. (Since then, I've met some apallingly snooty scent sellers.) She enjoyed my excitement and treated me like an adult with opinions of my own. She let me try several scents, gradually finding out what it was that appealed to me and finally took out her Diorella tester.
"I think you'll like this," she said, "It smells to me of overripe peaches." She was right, super-right, more right than I'd imagined possible. She had found me the most overwhelmingly gorgeous scent. It was simply the most beautiful smell that had ever wound its way to my olfactory nerve endings. I wanted to jump into its fragrant cloud and inhale forever. I was totally faithful to it for four years.

After that I was seduced by Chanel Cristalle, Yves Saint Laurent's Champagne (which was surpressed by France's Champagne producers then reappeared years later as Ivresse). Guerlain's Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat distracted me for a while then I dabbled in sundry citruses.
Decades after I found my partner perfume, I went searching for another. I have many fragrant friends, including the one and only bottle of Lynx Sarah McCartney - really - but I found the liquid love of my adult life in Paris, on another quest, at a small shop that my husband found for me. He tells me he doesn't regret it.

Editions de Parfum Frederic Malle is an interesting place. The chap himself invited the world's top perfumers to create any scent they wanted to, with no restriction on cost. Natural materials vary between £5 and £2000 a kilo. Synthetics are cheaper and that's what you get in most of the 21st Century scents you'll be attacked with as you cross the threshhold of a department store perfumery.

There we were in the small, dark, intensely modern shop. To smell the scents, you sniff a column of pure, fresh air perfumed only with the fragrance of your choice. You smell the effect you will have as you waft by. Once you've sniffed, the chamber is whooshed clear, ready for you to smell the next one. Just like my first time, the assistant asked me to describe the scents I usually like and I told her that I wanted one that reminded me of red berries. She filled the tube with Lipstick Rose and I fell for it instantly. Now, I carry it with me everywhere in a small, black metal tube and sometimes I allow other people a bit of a squirt if they ask very nicely. Their Dans tes Bras perfume reminds me of the way I used to smell at the end of a day at the beach: sea water, suntan lotion, skin, damp sand, sunsets, happiness. I'm very fond of that one too.

I still dabble, notably at B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful, where the stunning scents (also made with no limit on materials costs) are the best value for money that you will find in the world of fine perfumery. I love Superword Unknown and Two Hearts Beating as One. L'Artisan Parfumeur has several that I love, including Bois Farine ("Biscuits!" said my goddaughter, Bella) and Vanilia.

The thing about scent is that is it evocative, hard-hitting in an intensely emotional way. The nerve endings for our sense of smell are unprotected from the big wide world, unlike touch where skin is a barrier between the stimulus and the brain, so it deadens the feeling. The place we first detect a smell is close to the emotional centre of our brains so we are vulnerable to the effect of a stray smell that takes us inawares.

Find a scent that makes you smile, lifts you up and takes you to a pleasant place and you'll have yourself an emotional time-travel machine, an instantly intoxicating, inspiring tool. Dab, inhale, wait, create. I think I'll just have myself a quick helping of Lipstick Rose as I settle down to write. That should last me the morning.

Footnote: the film
Seek out a copy of Jasminum, a Polish film about perfume, love and other things. Ignore the badly translated subtitles and use them as a means to indicate what the characters really meant to say. I'm waiting for someone to watch it and bring out a Bird Cherry fragrance.

Footnote 2: the shops
Buying scent is not everyone's idea of fun. If you'd like me to help you, email and I shall. Really. First stop is Liberty, London W1 and head for the Frederic Malle collection on the ground floor. Say hello to Peggy and Albertino and tell them I scent you. Liberty's perfume collection is marvellous, but the service is unpredictable and you do need help. You might find a helpful, knowledgeable chap, but you might not. Ormonde Jayne in the orange Georgian arcade off Bond Street is just lovely too. Department stores are difficult. People are there to sell their particular brand not help you in your quest. The Arabian perfume shop opposite Selfridges on Oxford Street is an experience, and their scents are beautiful too. When you're in Paris, go to Detaille, Rue St. Lazarre. In New York, you want Bond No. 9.

Footnote 3: I mean it about helping you out. When you find the scent you were born to wear there will always be a beautiful place you can go to cheer yourself up, rain or shine. Now that I've found mine, my quest is to help the rest of the world find theirs.

PS By the way, I recently rediscovered Diorella. Although it's slightly different from decades ago (they reformulate now and again) it's still marvellous and makes me feel as though I've just passed all my O levels and my life is just beginning.

A generous piece of Lush soap...

...to the first person who can tell me where you can find these little men holding up the handrail on a staircase.
Aren't they magnificent?
It's astonishing the number of people who walk by them every day and have absolutely no idea that they are there. We need these beautiful things to make city life entertaining, don't you think. My friend Benoit once sprayed Parisien pavement bollards pink, got arrested, then got released because there is no law in France to say that you can't make the street furniture pink if you so wish. Allez la France!
I'm not advocating vandalism. I am encouraging public art; I'm definitely advocating noticing the trouble that people have gone to to make our urban environment inspiring. This weekend, engage your inner observer; notice something for the first time. Let me know what it is.