Roses, roses, roses and more roses

We've had a few days of really lovely weather up here in the north - after months of poor weather and rain nearly every day.  Suddenly the garden has sprung to life and the roses - about a month late this year - are opening everywhere.  The mill looks at its best.   I have a passion for old roses - the ones with wonderful names like Cardinal Richelieu and Madame Alberic Barbier, Ghislaine de Felisonde, and the beautiful Queen of Denmark.  Couldn't resist taking a few pics to share - the perfume is unbelievable.  This is one thing I will miss when I go to Italy.  At the foot of the steps to the garden I've got one of the David Austin roses and the colour and scent are wonderful.  I love the chaotic patterns of the petals as they unfurl.

I'm also very keen on wild rose species and have two - a red one from China which the bees go wild for, and another white one called Rosa Alba. 

The Apothecary's Rose has striped petals and is supposed to be very ancient.

In order to deter Saturday night revellers from climbing into my garden  I've got some really prickly specimens on the fence.   Stanwell Perpetual flowers all the time, but is lethal!   And then I have a German rose called ParkDirektor Riggers - single, dark red and very precise.

I'm particularly fond of rambling roses - scrambling up trees and up onto the cliff behind the mill.  This one is called The Rambling Rector.

And this is the crowning glory - four storey's high and a pillar of colour and perfume.  Paul's Himalyan Musk.

Hard to leave England when it looks like this!  But Neil rang me last night, spending his first night in our new home.  He described the lights twinkling in the valley below, the sun setting in the distant sea,  and it sounds utterly magical.  Two more weeks!

Coming Back

Coming back to my home in the north of England has been an odd experience. I’ve been gone for more than 5 months. Although the house was familiar, it felt like someone else’s home. I went to make a cup of tea in my kitchen and stood there like a stranger, not knowing where anything was. My tired, jet-lagged brain couldn’t even remember which cupboard I kept the mugs in!

The quiet rooms smelled damp and musty - there’s a tidemark on the wall downstairs where the winter floods came in and a lot of mud and plant debris on the flag stones. Judging by the smell, a rodent seems to have died in some secret nook or crevice. Upstairs the rooms had a Marie Celeste feeling to them. A magazine lay open on a coffee table where I must have been reading it before we left in October. Gardening shoes had been kicked into a corner of the hall with their socks curled up beside them and there was a half drunk mug of coffee mouldering on the table. Someone else’s abandoned life I was walking back into. The feelings of disconnection were very disturbing. I am certainly not the same person who left last autumn. I’m seeing my life here from a different perspective and part of me is still in Italy.

This morning, waking in my own comfortable bed, looking out of the window at the early light on the river, it all feels better. I’ve actually managed to sort through the stacks of mail that were sitting, a foot deep, on the dining table. The sun is shining outside and the fields are full of baby lambs. Very different to the Italy I left yesterday, but pretty good all the same.

Writers' Rooms

Space seems to be very important for writers. Hemingway and JK Rowling wrote in cafes; Katherine Mansfield liked 'transitional places', getting her ideas often in trains and hotel rooms. Wordsworth composed while on the hoof outdoors, Mrs Gaskell on the end of the kitchen table, the Bronte sisters round the fire in the Haworth parlour.

Even after twenty years of computer usage, I still write by hand before transferring it onto the screen. I seem to need that unbroken line between the brain and the hand for the words to trickle down onto the page. Later, I transfer the handwritten text to the keyboard, editing as I go. Both processes need space. When my children were small, writing space was difficult to find. I wrote a lot in the middle of the night when they were all in bed. But you can't always persuade your ideas to pop up only between the hours of 9pm and 3am! I would often write while shut in the bathroom for a few blissfully solitary moments, or in my car - scribbling at traffic lights, or parked outside the school. During the school holidays I used to go to the local library for a couple of hours. My very first biography was written under these conditions.

Now I have my own space, constructed specially for me by Neil. Lots of light, bookshelves, horizontal surfaces to litter with papers and books and - of course - the obligatory peace and quiet, high in the roofspace of the Mill. The windows have views only of the sky. On the walls I have family photographs, a painting of the farmhouse where I was brought up and a few mementos, including a literary award - just to remind me that it can happen. Self belief, it seems to me, is a very big percentage of any kind of creative art, and - perhaps - much more important than having the right space to do it in.

Where do you write? I'd love to know. For other 'Writers' Rooms' click here.