Sunday, July 30, 2006

Arvon Attendees Anonymous

Today I finally managed to get to Gill's in Oxford for a writing afternoon. Gill was one of the attendees on last October's brilliant Arvon with Lindsay Clarke and Adam Thorpe at Ted Hughes' old house Lumb Bank. It was a great experience, and a great group - everyone really got on well (as I think I may have said elsewhere on this blog, but if not, I'm saying it now!) Since then, Gill has been holding reunion afternoons at her house, but scheduling hassles have prevented me from attending until now.

It was a good session. I took along the latest version of the beginning of Elias, which now sees our main character, Jacob, in a coach on the way to see a 'sea monster' at Beverwijk (actually a beached whale, which washed up there on 20 December 1601, according to Simon Schama's Embarassment of Riches). I did a bit of a rehash last night after coming back from the pub, which seemed to go down well. I feel like I'm at last on the right track.

Gill's, Jo's and Kay's work was good, too. I look forward to reading more of it. And I also met Gill's partner Rob, who not only used to live with Richard Leigh, who gave me some help when I was writing The Templars, but also loves Andrei Rublev.