The Blank Sheet (or Writer's Block)

Apologies for the delay in producing this blog.  But the blank sheet is exactly what I've been suffering from.  A common condition for all creative people.

Many of you who have contributed tweets or read my blogs are creative people, writers, artists, perhaps musicians too.  So you all know about the blank sheet and understand the hesitancy contemplating that untouched emptiness, like a fresh fall of snow staring at you, and waiting for the first mark to be made.  But it's also exhilarating; that launch into the unknown.  It's what keeps us all buzzing, what life is about.

 For travellers too, the blank corner of the map is worrying.  What's there?  Why hasn't it been filled in with cartographical information.  Or perhaps it's just incorrect guesswork filling the gap, as I sometimes found on my treks in #WalksontheWildSide?  An intriguing opportunity to explore, or a scary void?

The important thing about writing, painting, playing an instrument, or even drawing a map, is that they are all languages.  A way of communicating.  And they are very similar because they all portray an image.  They all tell a story.  They are all different ways of constructing a plot.  Choosing verbs and adjectives is like choosing colours, or juxtaposing harmonies and discords.  Should this description be hot or cold, abrasive or calming?  Building a picture.  Playing with the images being created in the reader/viewer/listener's brain.  It's very exciting.  Creativity is exciting.  And intimidating.  Because it's easy to get it wrong.

Vasari, in his descriptions of the North Italian Renaissance painters, used to talk about 'making' a picture, not painting one, because it's a technical process, in those days also involving grinding the pigments and applying the 'fresco' plaster etc.  So also with writing, not just stringing words together to transmit an idea but filling it with flavours and nuances.  Or for a musician building sounds into a complex structure which colours the airwaves and transcends into the shimmering peace of a flat sea or a raging hurricane.

Every writer knows that the story is the easy bit.  It's how it's told that matters.  The mixing of words, like colours on a palette, is the really important and often complicated bit.  Of course there are technical issues to be respected (or consciously abandoned) like spelling, grammar, punctuation etc.  Every tiny dab of the brush, scrape of the palette knife, the lightest semi quaver, is part of making this vital image.  Creative artists sweat blood over these details.

And it all starts with a blank sheet.  Maybe the brain is teeming with conflicting ideas.  Maybe there's just a vague abstract notion of the eventual colour that is wanted, the rough shapes.  We're in the realms of scouring the imagination, stretching the mind.  Even digging deep into the soul.  Some writers like John Clare went insane.  Some of the best creativity walks a gossamer thin tightrope between brilliance and madness, and can spill over either way.  Or both.  John Dryden wrote, in Absalom and Achitophel, 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide'.  Some creative artists border alcoholic oblivion, like Dylan Thomas who somehow managed to sharpen his perception through whisky, until he destroyed himself.  The creation of beauty, the agonies of birth, the glory of pulling together the impossible. 

But faced with the blank sheet a painter friend insists that it is of paramount importance 'to attend'.  Like any job of work, if you don't 'attend' in your studio, study or music room and worry at it like a dog with a bone, it won't just happen of its own accord.

Although brilliance is rare, most of us do our damnedest to cover the ground with our feet of clay and stretch our fingers towards the unattainable perfection.  It's a journey worth making, a goal to strive for, a secret joy to achieve.  All starting with the same blank sheet. 

And now suddenly I've filled it!

Mountain Gorillas

 In 1938 my mother set off for darkest Africa to found a school in south-west Uganda.  In those days, before the war, few Europeans went into the depths of Africa, and certainly not 24 year old girls.  She stayed there for eight years before marrying my father who lived in Zanzibar and joining him there.  Her school, in a tiny village called Kabale, became one of the leading schools in Uganda.  Even Idi Amin sent his children.  

50 years later, in 1994, the headmistress Lilian Kigorogoro invited her, with the first pupils (now a retired surgeon, doctor and architect) to come and celebrate.  My mother was now 80.  The children of the school had spelt out a welcome message in flowers on the grassy bank and celebrated with music, acting and dancing.  The British High Commissioner, and some Ugandan cabinet ministers who were ex-pupils, came down for the day too.  Most of the original school buildings were still there, amazingly well preserved.  It was a great day and very moving.  

Not far from Kabale are the frontiers with Rwanda and the Congo (DRC).  On these borders volcanic mountain ranges surge upwards from the tropical rainforest.  And here live the world's only Mountain Gorillas; highly intelligent, gentle herbivore giants.  Just a year before our visit, small groups of eco-tourists were first allowed to go and watch them, and we felt it was an opportunity not to be missed.  

Their closest habitat to Kabale was The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.  We'd pre-booked a very basic camping site in the forest, which held just about a dozen people.  That was the only place to stay.  From there a guide took two groups of only half a dozen into the forest every day or so, to where the gorillas had last been seen.   Then trackers took over to follow their route through the dense forest.  Wherever the gorillas had gone, we went, crawling under scrub or scrambling up steep gradients.  It took hours and was exhausting.   

In the deep forest were several families of gorillas, but only two families had been naturalised to tolerate human beings.  As they share 98% of our DNA, they are extremely like us and can catch the same diseases, but while we have built up many immunities, a simple cold could wipe them out.  So extreme caution is necessary.  No one with a cough or runny tummy is allowed into the forest, and 15 feet was the closest contact allowed.  

But the gorillas haven't read the rule book and the guide warned us that sometimes a huge silverback might suddenly block the path.  Hmm, we felt nervous.  Sometimes he might charge, but you mustn't ever run.  That would be a disaster, gorillas are a lot faster than you are.  So you drop to your knees in subservience and look at the ground, while making little grunting noises which gorillas find relaxing.  It's easy to feel subservient when you're close to a 200kg mountain gorilla!  

We were lucky.  After hours we found our family group, but only a stay of one hour was permitted.  Some visitors might only see a hairy arm from behind a tree and had to be content with that.  Others, after a long trek, reached the Congo border and had to turn back disappointed.  It was sheer luck.  There were no guarantees.  

We were in a clearing where a huge fallen tree blocked our path.  On the other side was the family, a vast silverback, four females, and several 'children' scampering about, swinging on lianas and climbing over the adults and sliding down their Dad's back.  They noticed us but ignored us, as we watched and photographed them.  They are so very like us!  

Eventually one of the little ones became more and more interested in us and kept approaching until he was far too close for his safety and the trackers had to keep gently whisking him back with leafy sprigs .  He gazed at us all in turn, fascinated, his little amber eyes melting our hearts.  (My photo above)  

When the family moved off we followed, but one of our group stepped forward between the silverback and a little one.  Bad mistake!  Instantly, with a terrifying roar, the whole tree above the silverback was shaken as if torn by a hurricane and he bounded towards us.  Our instinct was to run, but the guide reminded us to drop to our knees and we grunted humbly.  Almost at once he accepted our apology and returned to his tree.  

The gorilla story has been a cautious success with numbers at last back above 1,000.  But that's all that remain.  Their biggest problem isn't just poaching but loss of habitat as human plantations encroach further and further into this last stronghold of irreplaceable tropical rainforest.  Now though, there is a new threat.  Coronavirus, our familiar demon, would be even more dangerous to gorillas than it is to us and could easily wipe them all out.  

I strongly recommend going to see these incredible creatures, who, like chimps, are our closest cousins, but please do what you can to help protect them.  They are so precious.  WWF have lots of information on-line and you can give directly towards their preservation. 

Our wonderful NHS

May 8th 2020 was the VE Day 75th anniversary.  An epic event.   In Europe it has long been celebrated with a public holiday, so it was good at last to have one here.  It was also the birthday of a national hero, Sir David Attenborough, a man who would empathise with my recent book Walks on the Wild Side.

Unimportantly to anyone but me, it was also my birthday!  So, in that glorious sunshine, unable to go anywhere in the lockdown, Mo and I sat in the garden to enjoy lunch of smoked salmon and champagne, with a special supper planned for the evening.

But we didn't get that far.  Half way through the afternoon I had a medical 'blip'.  I had suffered the same thing a couple of times before over the past five years, so knew what it was.  I use the word 'suffer' but there was no suffering, no pain, just a little strangeness.  Friends say it must have been scary.  No, not scary, just a bit unsettling.  I knew what real scariness meant from the adventures related in my book.

I felt better in less than 15 minutes and as I knew what it was, and as it was a holiday weekend in the middle of this awful Covid pandemic, I phoned our surgery at the next opportunity to discuss with a doctor, who decided to arrange a hospital appointment for a check-up.  So, despite the pandemic, two days later they put me through a rigorous programme of tests.  They were incredible, kind, efficient and helpful.  Fortunately the tests all came up clear.

But what really was scary was seeing the colour coding throughout the hospital marking the levels of risk from the virus, and walking down corridors past doors to wards with large yellow warning signs saying COVID, and even 'safe area' green signs sometimes marked MAY CONTAIN COVID.  That brought me up sharp.  Yet throughout all this the NHS staff were going about their work looking relaxed, a normal day.  At one moment, when a trolley was pushed into a ward by masked porters, though still a long way off, the nurse walking with me put out a hand to hold me back.  A very poorly patient.  Very up-close and personal.  The moment when a normal member of the public, 'one of us', suddenly becomes a danger to life, 'one of them', almost like a terrorist?  Yet our nurses and doctors deal with them all day, day after day, literally working on the edge of life.  With devotion and kindness. 

I had felt that I was a distraction from their more important duties, but they were determined that I had the best care and thoroughly pursued every possible test.  In spite of everything, the NHS are still there for all of us

 In my book I often talk about the extraordinary bravery of people in very dangerous situations.  But none showed more courage than our own precious NHS staff.  How brave they are!  Having been so close to the reality, our respect for them has increased beyond measure.  We clap on Thursdays with renewed vigour.  Please honour these magnificent people!

Lockdown

Good Morning, it’s April 29th and we’re deep in lockdown.  Hope you are faring well and coping?  This awful pandemic has thrown up all sorts of questions about our relationship with the world around us and our place in it.  Whoops, a heavy subject I know.  But the world is getting smaller, and people like me born in the middle of the last century are old enough and ugly enough to have seen huge changes.  Many good ones of course, but also some serious worries.... did you know that in the 40 years since I made my lengthy treks through the volcanic desert of East Africa (Walks on the Wild Side published by eye-books.com), 60% of the wildlife on this planet has been destroyed because of human activity (WWF stats).  Young people are inheriting a mess, and I pray that they will be up to sorting it out.  In the 1960s my generation was deeply critical of the ones before it and the mess they'd made with two world wars and the pollution of the industrial revolution, and we were determined to make the world a better place.  But as we got older a lot of people seemed to forget these ideals.  We produced Trump!  It's so important to follow ideals.

40 years ago much of the world was a simpler, cleaner place.  Tribal East Africa was sometimes an extremely dangerous place to be with lots of raiding and even gangs of bandits keen to aim a spear or AK-47 at you.  Yet there was also a strange kind of decency about it.  The wealthy West was happy to look down its nose at these half naked, and sometimes starving, people and call them 'savages'... but hold on just a minute, who are the ones who have been ruining this planet?  Not them.  Time for a mirror please.  We are the savages, fountain pens and keyboards instead of spears and automatics. 

So, will we all come out of this pandemic a more responsible kinder world?  I would so much like to believe that we will, but greed and corruption are hard to conquer.  What do you think?