Wednesday 20 March 2013

Magical history in the heart of London


Christ Church, Spitalfields
Although I've lived in London for years, there are still parts of the city I don't know at all. Spitalfields is one of them. Over the past few years, this once-shabby corner of the East End has picked itself up, dusted itself down and emerged as a vibrantly multi-cultural area, crammed with cutting-edge shops and offices, artists' studios, street markets (including Petticoat Lane and the amazing Sunday-morning Columbia Road flower market) and a thousand good places to eat, from uber-cool steakhouses to the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane.

Spitalfields has played an important part in the history of London. After the Great Fire in 1666, traders began operating outside the inner City's walls, and in 1682 King Charles granted permission by royal decree for a market to be held on Thursdays and Saturdays near Spital Square. The market became a huge sucess and people began to settle in this formerly rural area of fields and streams - among them French Hugenots, fleeing France as anti-Protestant feeling grew in that country towards the end of the seventeenth century. Hugenot master silk-weavers were attracted by the new commercial area of Spitalfields and some settled in elegant houses there, followed by poorer Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine, Spitalfields has played an important part in the history of London. After the Great Fire in 1666, traders began operating outside the inner City's walls, and in 1682 King Charles granted permission by royal decree for a market to be held on Thursdays and Saturdays near Spital Square. The market became a huge sucess and people began to settle in this formerly rural area of fields and streams - among them French Hugenots, fleeing France as anti-Protestant feeling grew in that country towards the end of the seventeenth century. Hugenot master silk-weavers were attracted by the new commercial area of Spitalfields and some settled in elegant and later still by Jewish settlers from Eastern Europe and the Netherlands. At one time predominantly Jewish, in the twentieth century Spitalfields became the heart of the Bangladeshi community in London, and today the best bagel bars in London rub shoulders with the best curry houses.
 
Traces of this historical pedigree remain, and one of the most enchanting is Dennis Severs' house in Folgate Street. This house, which dates from around 1724, was rescued from dereliction by Dennis Severs, who spent years restoring it and turning it into - not so much a museum as a piece of living history, or performance art. Visitors wander through each of the ten rooms (in silence, please, phones switched off and NO cameras!), observing minutiae from the lives of the imaginary Jervis family who have, seemingly, just popped out: a snatch of conversation from the hall, a wig thrown over the chair, a letter half-read at the breakfast table, the smell of food wafting up from the basement kitchen. Up the four floors we climb, to the shabby rooms at the top which are rented out to a weaver's family, and where the recorded tolling of a bell announces the death of King William IV and Queen Victoria's accession to the throne in 1837.

A short walk from the steel and glass of Liverpool Street Station along a busy road lined with office blocks, Dennis Severs' house is a wonderful time capsule in the midst of this modernity. The rooms are lit only by the flickering of open log fires and candles dotted here and there, and walking through them gives a wonderful sense of what it must have been like to live in one of these narrow townhouses. Down in the basement kitchen, the wooden ceiling planks only inches above your head make you feel trapped, desperate for fresh air and a glimpse of the outside world beyond the street grating.  Up in the draughty attic rooms, with their plaster and lathe ceilings open to the roof space, a whole family poor as church mice must somehow scratch out a living. And in between, the lavish drawing and music rooms, elaborately decorated and crammed with china, furniture and nick-nacks, create an entirely different atmosphere of leisure and refinement.

Anyone in search of inspiration need look no further! That's one of the things I love most about London: the (occasionally eccentric) pockets of history you can stumble across, around the corner from a gleaming tower block...         
 

Saturday 2 March 2013

Secrets of success from a writers' conference...

Spring has sprung! Despite not having managed to write a single blog for the entire month of February, I am looking to the future with renewed enthusiasm, determined to be more organized, more creative and more PRODUCTIVE (and maybe slimmer, too). So what has sparked this fresh resolve? Well, I've just returned from a weekend meet-up/fiesta/brainstorm (conference sounds too formal) with the wonderful group of writers of which I'm a member, the Scattered Authors' Society. Apart from the pleasure of catching up with friends, swapping stories of writing and publishing ups and downs, and demolishing large amounts of good food and wine, we are also treated to talks by Sassies with particular areas of expertise or valuable experiences to share.

Catherine on the crying bench
Catherine Johnson told us about her time on the prestigious BBC Writers' Academy training course (now sadly no longer running) and shared a few of its secrets for gripping storylines. Amongst them: a five-act structure has more potential than a three-act; the nature of story is change; always be surprising. Here's a photo of Catherine on the 'crying bench' from Eastenders, where the characters go to sob - weeping because the Writers' Academy scheme is finished. But Catherine's script-writing career with 'Continuous Drama' (soap operas to you and me) is about to go from strength to strength...

Kate Harrison spoke about the way her life has changed since the publication (initially electronically on Kindle) of her book, The 5:2 Diet. Embarking on this diet, she couldn't find a book to guide her through, so wrote one herself. So not only did she find herself 23 pounds lighter, she soon had a bestseller soaring up the Amazon charts followed swiftly by a publishing contract for the print edition. Very encouraging! It brought home to me the flexibility of self-publishing: if you spot a trend, you needn't be deterred by lack of support from mainstream publishers. I've just ordered my copy of the book and am looking forward to losing some weight and boosting my brain power in time for summer.

Just as inspiring, Nicola Morgan - writer, teen brain expert and social media guru - told us how to make best use of our Facebook author pages (the words 'custom tabs' featured heavily but didn't strike fear into the soul), and how to re-establish our sense of writerly purpose by means of the scary-sounding stimulus generalization. And now the secret of stimulus generalization can be yours. Basically, I think it boils down to ridding yourself of bad habits by changing the environment in which you work: either going to a different place (Nicola's new shed did the trick for her), or reorganizing/re-decorating/refreshing your existing study, or spare bedroom, or corner of the kitchen table. As well as revitalising my desk with a notice board and an inspiring picture of Rascal, my much-missed writing companion (see previous post), I've unleashed my inner neat freak and tidied up the kitchen, too.

Now I can't think of any more distractions, so all that's left to do is get on and WRITE!  But perhaps I'll just look at Facebook first....   

Kitchen dresser before...
... and after!