http://www.rachelhore.co.uk en-gb rachelhore.co.uk 2012-2-2T00:00:00Z rachelhore.co.uk http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#111607 Bright cold skies in Norfolk and a light dusting of snow on fence posts and roofs with promise of more to come. It seems unbelievable now to think that only ten days ago I was paddling in the Indian Ocean and picking perfect sea shells off the beach. The Galle Literary Festival was a wonderful occasion. It took place in the old Galle Fort once the Dutch colonial compound situated on its own little peninsula at the tip of Sri Lanka with its own lighthouse and breathtaking views of the sea in all directions. Its full of fine old buildings and many of the events took place in old halls or colonial residences. The wide range of events included in conversations with headline authors Tom Stoppard Joanna Trollope Richard Dawkins DBC Pierre John Boyne. New books were launched by Romesh Gunesekera Ashok Ferrey and Roshi Fernando. A highlight for me was seeing Izzeldin Abuelaish the Gaza Doctor who following the lost of three of his daughters in a rocket attack wrote I Shall Not Hate a book... 2012-2-2 10:12:20 http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#109889 After a bit of a rest I am now ten thousand words into a new novel and taking every opportunity to sneak upstairs to my computer to write. However as ever life interrupts and one has to let it. This months excitement is a week in Sri Lanka at the Galle Literary Festival courtesty of the British Council. httpwww.galleliteraryfestival.com. There Im to talk about A Place of Secrets. Ive visited Sri Lanka twice in the past once as a child in the 1960s when I remember stroking elephants and being overawed by The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy the second time on holiday in 1991 with my husband. We loved the country and the people we met who were so hospitable but were very much aware of its dark side with soldiers everywhere and nogo areas. Since then theres been the Tsunami and the terrible end to the war and we hope to find out more about what its like there now. 2012-1-7 11:58:11 http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#42360 It was the choice of Star Trek Wolverine or Coraline and we plumped for Coraline wouldnt you out of that lot and Im really glad we did as it is the best animated film Ive ever seen. It was 3D so we had the added excitement of wearing 3D specs and whispering to ourselves how weird EVERYONE ELSE looked wearing them. It was the first time Id seen a 3D film and it took me a few minutes not to feel like diving for cover whenever something jetted out of the screen at me. Its a tautly told story though you have to hold on tight round all the twists and turns about a dissatisfied child who wanders into a parallel world where she can have her hearts desire but at a terrible price. The girl at the heart of it is a brilliant evocation of a grumpy bored modern child periodically utterly transformed by happiness. The sets richochet between glowing fantasia and nightmare sinister. This is definitely not a movie for young children but my 16 13 and 9 year old boys thought it was fabulous. It... 2009-5-27 20:52:04 http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#41209 The night before last I heard a Baroque quartet called Florilegium play at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich and Lorna Anderson a singer with a most beautifully expressive voice. It wasnt church music but a lively mixture of secular music by Purcell and his contemporaries poems turned into songs about the healing power of music about spirituality and madness and love Scottish airs and perfect little instrumental pieces for recorder violin a viola da gamba like a small cello and a harpsichord.. I came home as though floating on a cloud. My eldest son must get the same sort of feeling after a Death Metal concert each to their own eh I was sufficiently inspired by the experience to brush the dust off my treble recorder the next day but the dog made her feelings perfectly clear by howling so theres the end of another brilliant musical career before its even started. Ive just printed off the first 112 pages of my new typescript to inspect progress with a cold eye... wish me luck. 2009-5-7 11:08:47 http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#41089 We celebrated Bank Holiday with one of our traditional family jaunts I wonder what other families do We park at Southwold by the water tower walk over the bailey bridge down to Walberswick beach then along the waters edge to Dunwich. Every year the children get quicker and I get slower especially if theres too little sand and too much gravel. The dog has the most exhausting time because she jinks between the two groups of boys ahead and adults behind puzzled as ever at our strange human behaviour. At Dunwich we make straight for the Ship Inn for fish and chips. Because of the dog we end up sitting outside in the rain and the wind so overall this is a very bracing outing. Back in the car waiting for the others to come back from stocking up at the 1p 2p sweet shop another family tradition I read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and wish that I too could drop everything and go off to Italy for four months then to live on an Ashram in India and then Bali. I expect there are homegr... 2009-5-5 13:46:17 http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#40860 1st May and were in for a long hot summer. I did my Olevels in the terrible heat of 1976 and now Boy No.1 will do his GCSEs next month possibly with the same How past and present can echo each other and small coincidences take you back in time. When I was sixteen all my friends and I were well practised in Saturday jobs and paper rounds. Now most of that age will have had little or no experience of paid work at all. Insurance of under18s is part of the problem. A newspaper recently said that some new graduates emerge onto the jobs market with no work experience at all. My son will do a week unpaid in a bookshop at the end of June its a start I guess. 2009-5-1 09:53:38 http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#40558 Its been a perfect summer day. We even managed our first barbecue of the year but had to eat it indoors because of the windchill The children and labrador have been bouncing on the trampoline and swimming for about 20 seconds at a time in an unheated swimming pool Ive been reading the proof of a childrens novel the first in the Misfitz series by Joshua Lacy who wrote the marvellous Grkthedog mystery series. Coming out in June the Misfitz featuring an extended family of stepchildren and halfsiblings are a modern Famous Five but with the benefits of the internet. Great fun 2009-4-26 18:02:15 http://www.rachelhore.co.uk/page11.htm#39895 Im longing to sit down and continue writing the next book ideas are stumbling in from all directions but there is too much to distract me. Its the school holidays and theres a huge pile of washing that never seems to get any smaller why do children think a towel should only be used once and a heap of marking that I really ought to get out of the way... except Ill just empty the dishwasher then there was that birthday card I had to write... and Ive just noticed my youngest has been in his pyjamas all day... Last week was full of exciting publicity events to do with The Glass Painters Daughter but now Im back to real life again its difficult making the adjustment. And theres not enough time for reading Im halfway through a biography of Thomas Hardy at the moment and deep in nineteenth century Dorset. 2009-4-15 19:15:02