Naomi Alderman's Blog

So: Zombies, Run! It's a new iPhone app I'm making with the fantastic games studio Six to Start. We launched it on Kickstarter just five days ago and kept it low-key, just sending out a few tweets and Facebook/G+ status updates, and it's already got $21,209 of funding. Wow. Could this have gone any better?

So I thought this would be a great time to talk about how we came up with the idea, and what our thoughts are about how to make the story work with the running and the gameplay.

Origin story

Earlier this year, on a total whim, I joined the first "Up and Running" online running training run by the lovely Shauna Reid and running coach Julia Jones. It's great fun and I highly recommend it for anyone who's new to running and a bit freaked out by the idea.

One of the first things they asked us was: "why do you want to run?" and one of the other participants gave an answer that made us all laugh: "to outrun the zombie horde". And this started me thinking. That's really why we want to be fit (or fitter), isn't it? It's not just a vanity thing, we want to know that if things go bad we'd be able to rely on our bodies to get us through and keep us safe. And it's cool to imagine yourself in an action movie – I dorkily do that all the time when I'm on the treadmill.

At the same time Adrian and I had been talking about finding a project to create together. We sat down for a chat. Adrian's a very keen runner and he'd thought about making some kind of running app. I said the words "running away from the zombie horde" and it all came from there.

Storytelling on the move

From my limited experience of running, I know it's pretty taxing, and part of the joy is getting 'into the zone'. So we've been thinking really hard about how to tell a story which is exciting and enhances your run rather than annoying you.

Our idea is that the story will come in bursts between the tracks on your own playlist. We all have those 'workout' playlists, right? That great song will come on, you'll get into the groove, and then as it comes off there'll be that burst of static and, there you are, Runner 5, out on a mission, being told what you need to do, or what's happening around you, or what's… coming to get you.

So this presents some interesting storytelling challenges. We figure you don't want a burst of story that's too long, because running with music is awesome. But you need enough to communicate what's going on and keep you excited for the next instalment, because running with music while wondering if the zombies got runner 12 out there is even more awesome. And there's the added challenge that we don't know how long you'll want to run for and we don't think it's really the purpose of our app to prescribe that.

Storytelling in short arcs

My conclusion, having turned this around many different ways, is that the story will have to develop in very short arcs. Let's say no one's going to go out for less than 20 minutes, we want each arc to be able to conclude within 20 minutes – so within let's say four or five 60-120 second bursts of story. (Writing-craft geekery: four or five sections is how US TV dramas are often divided up, which interests me. It's a good number. Teaser, plus three or four 'acts'.) This means that if you run for more than 20 minutes you'll hear more than one arc, but anytime you stop there should be a hook to make you want to go back.

I don't want to spoil any of the surprises, but I think we'll be able to tell some pretty great stories in those windows. There'll be stories that happen back at base that you hear about over the radio, things that happen to you along the way, and the way you allot resources – or maybe how you respond to in-game found objects once you're back home – will determine which stories open up for you to explore.

It's a really exciting challenge and I'm already thrilled that it's funded and so we know it'll be made. I'm already brimming over with ideas and ready to get writing – if there's interest I might even give some hints and thoughts here about how that process is going!

 

I feel I still have many questions. I am not as creative as Marie at putting them together, but basically they boil down to: was the whole Royal Pardon business done just because Gatehouse is crazy? In fact, does the whole story boil down to: Gatehouse is crazy? I mean, pensions schmensions, there are easier ways to make sure you're actually going to survive to collect your pension than using a disappeared government slush fund to support the drug trade in the UK to make a few million quid. When Glickman asks Gatehouse the very pertinent question: "why didn't you just have Harvey Wratten killed in prison?" Gatehouse replies: "This is our thing, not theirs." Which is the same, surely, as saying: "I am totally crazy." And totally undermines the thing he says later about the whole business being "cleaning house". In fact, he has been dirtying his house, like deliberately splashing a great gout of blood into a perfectly good 'have him killed in prison so it looks like suicide' tomato soup. 

Going back to watch episode 1 though, I am delighted with how the information is casually dropped in that Jay Wratten knew he had a tail when he was carrying drugs and deliberately led him to his uncle. And does Honey's "you never used to hold the door open" to Gabriel in ep 1 prefigure that which comes later? This is really a placeholder blog post, because I want to come back and do a full rundown of everything that I think happened. But in the meantime, if you are so minded, have at it in the comments. 

I don't know why, really, but Israel seems to be coming up more and more frequently these days in the questions people ask me or the things I hear them say about me.

For example, I heard from a friend, A, that another writer, B, had said they were surprised that A was friends with me, since B had heard I believed that anyone who criticises Israel is an anti-semite. This is not what I believe, and I have never said anything like it.

Then I was asked to appear at a festival. I looked at the line-up of speakers and saw that the strand on 'Palestine' contained seven speakers who I know to be strongly critical of Israel and none who take a contradictory or even a middle view. I declined the invitation, saying that the line-up of this strand made me feel uncomfortable. They replied saying "but it's possible to criticise Israel without being anti-semitic". As if I had accused them of anti-semitism.

So I would like, first of all, to make it very clear that I don't think all arguments against Israel are anti-semitic. I do think that sometimes good people who argue against Israel's policies end up allying themselves with out-and-out anti-semites. I think the same is true of good people who argue against the policies of Palestinian organisations - they sometimes end up allying themselves with people who hate Islam and Muslims. I think you have to be careful who you're jumping into bed with. Your enemy's enemy isn't always your friend.

But if I don't condemn Israel, if I absolutely do not stand with those who do, it doesn't mean that I think all criticism of Israel is anti-semitic. It might mean that I disagree with that criticism and/or that I don't think outright condemnation is ever helpful. Strangely enough, people can disagree with each other without name-calling.



So that's what I don't believe. Here's what I do believe.

I believe that Israel has a right to exist. I believe that the Palestinian people have a right to nationhood, self-determination and a land of their own. I believe that a two-state solution is the only possible way forward. I fear it may be a long time coming.

I don't believe in evil people, but I believe that there are people on both sides of this conflict who are so stupid, misguided and frightened that they do evil things. Some of those people are leaders, on both sides. I don't think that either side will do much good by denying that such things have been done by their people. I don't think finger-pointing, saying "it's all them, not us", "all our violence is justified and measured, all theirs is unprovoked and disproportionate" will help this situation improve.

I think the very best thing anyone on either side can do is to seek to understand the other point of view, calmly and respectfully. I don't believe in one-sided debates. This is why, if you ask me to take part in an event with seven anti-Israel speakers and me, I will decline. If you ask me to take part in an event with seven anti-Palestinian speakers and me, I will decline. If we can't have balanced discussion on this issue in the cool of North Europe, I don't see how we can expect people to do that in the midst of battle.



I once heard a man interviewed on the radio about the process of truth and reconciliation commissions. I can't remember what country he was from - there are so many places it could be - in my memory maybe it was South Africa, but it might have been Rwanda, or Northern Ireland or somewhere else. This man had lost his son to a bullet fired by "the other side", whichever side that was. But while I can't remember the details of the conflict, I remember what he said about it.

He said: "you want to know what peace means? Peace means walking into the supermarket and seeing the man there who murdered your son, doing his shopping. Peace means doing nothing, saying nothing, walking out and going home."

That's the courage peace requires.

I think that the courage needed not to seek revenge, not to blame and counter-blame, not to re-fight the old war again and again until it's consumed a hundred times as many lives, I think that courage is far greater than the bravado to keep on fighting. I think we kid ourselves if we suggest for one moment that it's not incredibly difficult to make and keep peace. That tremendous sacrifices will not be needed on both sides. In a conflict like this, the easy way out is to pick a side. The hard way, the brave way, is to understand that picking sides is the whole problem.

I think we start with ourselves.

A few weeks ago, the other Perplex City writers and I got to talking about how much we'd enjoyed working together, and started wondering about what our characters might be up to now. So, this is very unofficial, but we put together some fan fiction for a Restitution of the Cube Day treat. And we love you all :-)

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They say you can't go home again but I say: 'what do they know?'
some words from Violet Kiteway

[This comes to you courtesy of Scarlett's beau Rory, bless his rather-conventional-for-my-taste-but-just-right-for-her cotton socks. Kurt has made some kind of puzzle for you too.]

First, I went to Alchemy. Not the beach. The, you know, rest centre for "exhausted" celebrities. It was my father's idea and at first I tried to say no, but then I thought about it and said yes. Fine, yes. Alright then, yes. I've seen all sorts of things, consorted with some terrible people, but it was Babel and the intimations of some incipient insanity that finally convinced me that, yes, a stay in a quiet, pleasant treatment facility was just what I needed.

It was better than I expected, actually. I thought there'd be screaming, crying, weird people wandering the halls. But they must have put me in the "still pretty sane really" building. It was like a nice hotel - and I've always loved a nice hotel - old-fashioned claw-foot bath, the latest key-enabled vid-screens, courteous room service, and a deep comfortable bed. I arrived on the evening train north from the City, they brought me boiled eggs with toast fingers just like my mother used to make when I was a child, and then I fell asleep for 17 hours. Been a while since I'd done that.

I think I just needed to rest, really. That's what they told me anyway. I took long walks along the coastal paths around Alchemy, and they talked to me about what I'd seen and what I'd done, and they took various scans of my head and made non-commital noises about the possible effects of cross-dimensional travel. And they didn't change me, that's the funny thing. It's not that I'm different now. Just more me again, less feeling that I'm pretending to be myself.

The company wasn't bad either. Met a few burnt out executives, a couple of drop-outs from the PCAG, and one senior academician who must remain nameless. And, well, let's just say that in my key's contacts list, I have a certain entertainer who might have fathered a certain child with a certain... oh bugger beating around the bush, his photos were in all the papers anyway, I hung out with Alejo Jackson, OK? He's more handsome in person. And he gives good hugs. Oh yeah, that's what I said.

I was there for three months. They had me think about the future. For so long, the future was terrifying. Either I'd be found out, and I'd die and other people would die too, or I wouldn't, and it'd just be the other people. They said to me "you have a lot of guilt about these deaths, particularly for someone who didn't kill anyone". I said "I used to date a murderer. Maybe I got his share." But they said "just think about it. What do you want to do now? What do you want?" And it seemed like a million years since I'd thought about that. But I did, and the answer came out of the air.

So I left Alchemy.

***

Our world is changing. We're not just a city anymore, we can't remain isolated as we have done. The Cube's changed that for one thing. We still don't know how it does what it does, but the fact that it can do it is proving very interesting to a group of very clever people at the Academy and elsewhere. You know that phenomenon, where for years something is thought impossible - like running a mile in under 4 minutes - and then one person proves it can be done and 10 years later everyone's doing it? It's like that. Once they accepted my story, once they knew it could be done, they've started to work out how to do it themselves. A few months ago, I hear, one of the boffins at Viendenbourg managed to transport a mouse onto a metre-square target 200 miles away. And you'd better believe if we've worked out how to do it, then the other people on this world will be figuring it out too.

So suddenly, peace isn't just a word anymore, it's a precious thing we want to protect. I stopped in to see Kurt one day at the Academy just to ruffle his hair and mess up his papers and see how much I could annoy him by criticising his taste in literature - really Kurt, I thought you hated Varkin? Garnet spotted me and came over and said in that voice which means "I'm trying to say this casually but it's actually really important", he said "so, we're looking for diplomats." And I said "diplomats?" And he said "diplomats." And, well, I guess you don't need to hear the whole conversation. It wasn't like I hadn't known they were looking.

You wouldn't think I'm the most diplomatic person alive. You'd think they should send someone like, I don't know, Tippy. She could solve puzzles for them slowly and sexily. But apparently there's some test they can do to see how likely you are to freak out when confronted with a totally new culture and way of life and, well, I don't freak out at all. Not one little bit. I'm sure you can understand why.

They needed people who could learn new languages, and were interested in exploring and retaining vast amounts of cultural knowledge. Like a librarian. And who could read other people and judge how to respond to them. Like a poker player. Turns out I was made for international diplomacy all these years, it's just that we didn't have any inter-nations for me to do it with.

So I left the City. As part of a team, obviously, of people with a lot more knowledge of the ins-and-outs of the business than me. Bound for an ambassadorial position in the Great City State and Equitable Government of Xia-Hifa. My dad clapped his hand on my shoulder and told me he was proud. I wrote to Lettie but she didn't say anything. Me and Kurt had a farewell party the night before I left, just the two of us.

"You'll miss me," I said.

"I'll think of some way to occupy my time," he said, and I hugged him and I knew that he, of all of us, would be OK.

***

What can I tell you about Xia-Hifa? If you'd been able to read the Sentinel these past few years you'd have seen the vid-feeds and the wide-eyed travelogues from those with enough time and courage to make the three-week overland journey (it's faster if you get the diplomatic shuttles, but those aren't open to just anyone). You'd have spotted the sudden explosion in Xia-Hifan restaurants (but they never get the yellow-mould and seabug pate just right), and the complaints about their tourists turning up in *our* beloved city, jacking up the prices on everything and insisting on speaking Perplexian with that weird accent. Oh, and by the way, we shouldn't be pronouncing it Xia-Hifa, it's Xuo-H-yoo-fe with the slight coughing sound called the Kuh at the start. Take it from one who took the lessons, studied the material, and hawked up the phlegm getting those sounds right.

It's a pretty amazing place. Kurt, who was the only person who I think actually read my weekly reports to friends, ex-lovers, and other co-conspirators, was particularly excited by the "equitable government", which is essentially government by jury service, with a certain amount of intra-group jockeying for position thrown in. If you live in XH, you're basically constantly on civic duty of some sort - whether it's serving on your street's snow-clearing and smartening-up collective or, if your number comes up, taking a place in government. It makes them think differently about everything; it took us months to work out that no one was coming to the Embassy parties because we hadn't chosen a representative for the local parks preservation committee. It means that their public spaces are breathtaking - gorgeous architecture chosen to make people happy, vast art projects, wide streets and gardens everywhere. Having said that, their fashion sense is appalling. There's a double-hood-and-mask thing going on now which… no, I can't even talk about it.

There was so much work to be done. After centuries of being so wide-apart and so separate that we might as well have been on different planets, suddenly the different city-states of our world are coming into contact. And we really do have to make sure we understand each other so as to prevent, well, you know, the thing that happened before. It's not just teleportation – for some reason the XH-ers have suddenly started investigating powered flight. You know, like those paper aeroplanes Kurt used to make for the competitions back in Perplex City. Except bigger, obviously. And not made of paper. Seeing the schematics for the XH powered gliders made me so nostalgic somehow, and I asked Kurt to send me a paper aeroplane, but he said he'd given up making them, and wouldn't make one specially for me no matter how much I bothered him. I don't know why telling people that something would make me really really happy rarely seems to motivate them to do it.

But after a while, I felt like I'd been there forever. Like the City and its people were fading further and further away. I had an important job. I even had a secretary and an office and a to-do list like regular people. And for a while I loved it: the discovery, the challenge, the new things all around me. I found a new boyfriend, Hiust. He was one of the guys who was working as liaison between the Embassy and the constantly rotating and evolving government. For a while it was torrid and exciting and a bit trangressive. We wondered if we were the first Perplexian-Xia-Hifan couple ever; although probably not, so much history has been lost. And then it was easy and comfortable and familiar. And then one day he was gone, because that's how these things seem to go. And I was sitting in my apartment one rainy Thanksday, thinking, as I so often seem to think, "is that all there is?"

There was a knock at the door. A messenger, special delivery, wearing one of those huge green and pink pendants they wear in XH without any apparent understanding of the basic principles of colour-matching.

"Who's it from?"
"Doesn't say."
Ah. A flash, suddenly, of deja vu.

I opened the envelope. It was a ticket, on the fastest land-shuttle heading out the next day. And a note. A printed, unsigned note.
"Someone wants to see you, Violet. Come home."

And it seemed like the right thing to do. So I did.

***

I'd been away for almost three years. My apartment was much as I'd left it. Good old diplomatic department had apparently even had it cleaned before I arrived back. But it didn't really seem like home anymore. The view seemed... smaller, after XH. The Strip's not so impressive once you've seen the light show on a Middleday at the Ring of Flame.

 

I called Garnet.
"You wanted to see me?"
"No?" he said. Although it was a pleasure to hear from me obviously and my request for a leave of absence had been granted and well deserved after three years in the field.

Ah, I thought. Yes, I think I knew that already. I think I'd been waiting for a long time for this to happen. Happen again.

Nonetheless, I did the rounds. Because I was probably wrong after all and maybe my secretary had just been really super-efficient back-covery with that leave of absence thing.

 

I went to see my dad. He's the same as ever. A bit more grizzled, a bit more belligerent, a bit more inclined to mutter about the Earlywine family under his breath although I know he loves Rory more than he'd ever tell Lettie. He's got some huge row brewing with the council about some technical issue around control of the Cube research, and tried to tell me about it but I got lost halfway through and found myself making "mmm-hmm, aha" noises instead of actually listening.

Eventually, I said: "Dad, did you send me a ticket to come home?"

And he said: "I did not. I'd never interfere in your life Violet. You or your sister's. You're both grown women now, your mother would have wanted you to make your own choices."

And he poured me another whiskey and we silently toasted my mother. And it was comfortable, and familiar, but also not my home any longer. I started to think maybe I'd spent too long in so many different places I didn't have a home any more at all.

 

I even went to see Caine. I'd realised there was something I needed to say, something that had got lost in all the murder and torture and betrayal, something much simpler than that.
He sat behind the reinforced glass. I turned on the comms channel.
His eyes were just the same as ever, like he could look right through your head and was faintly amused by what he saw there.

"You broke my heart," I said.
"I know," he said.
And that was all there was.

But I guess I was glad I'd said it anyway.

As I left, one of the guards passed me a note he'd given them for me. It's here.
I don't know what went wrong with Caine, and it sounds like he doesn't know either. I don't think he's black all through, but I know I can't help. Maybe he'll be in that dark place forever. Maybe he'll find a way out. Maybe I should stop wondering about it. Or, you know, maybe it's just that psychopaths turn out to be really clever and charming right up until they rip your heart out. Who knows?

 

I saw Scarlett. I hadn't imagined I would, thought she'd be angry with me for the next thousand years and I'd never manage to say anything or do anything to change that. But one of my olive branches reached her - or, to be honest, it's that she's a better person than I am, and can forgive more easily than me. Even that. Even me. And she's happy, probably happier than I'll ever deserve to be, and that's just right too. But I didn't even need to ask her if she'd sent me a ticket home, because I knew from her face that she hadn't known she'd be ready to see me until the moment she did.

 

And at last, I went to see Kurt. I don't know why I'd been putting it off, really, nothing much had changed. The painting I'd sent him was on the wall of his office, although there was no damn paper aeroplane for me, would it have been so very much to ask? But there he was sitting at his desk with the same mountain of paperwork, and the same sweet woeful put-upon expression he's made every day for as long as I've known him which has, of course, been forever and ever.

He hugged me, and I said, "I missed you".
He said "we talked practically every day, Violet."
"Still."
"How's your mass-murdering ex?"
"Still crazy. How's yours?"
"Still dead."
And we went out for dinner.

We went to the new hot place, Triple-Square, where they did a knock-off of X-H-ian tretretretre stew so bad it made my eyes water, but it was all fine because Joya and Alejo were three tables over and I even got a little wave when I sat down. Although RFD's new album, 'Character Development' is out, and they're trying to hide little Allegra from the cameras as much as possible, so I didn't go over. I can still cause a bit of a scene in this city. And after dinner we wandered through the Academy, and up to the Cube museum even though we've been there a hundred times before it still always seems to be the place we wind up. Bathed in the warm yellow light they illuminate it with at night, staring at the thing, waiting to see if it'll talk to me. Talk to me again.

I said: "Kurt. You read all the cube research, don't you?"
"Yup."
"And you actually understand most of it, which is more than I can say."
"Yup."
"But am I right in thinking that, even after all the work they've done, they're still saying that it can't be sentient, not sentient like it seemed to be to me?"
He hesitated.
"Kurt, I know what they're saying. That all the things that happened to me on Earth were probably just things I did myself, in some kind of fugue state. That I ordered tickets for myself, and imagined the phone ringing and all of that. I know they're saying that, because they say the cube can't possibly have done it itself."
Kurt nodded, slowly.
"But you don't think I'm crazy, right?"
He looked at me. A careful, thoughtful, considered look.
"No," he said at last, "I don't think you're crazy."
"You've worked it out too, haven't you?"
"Worked what out?"
"If the Cube can't be sentient, and I'm not crazy… someone else must have been controlling it. Using it to move things and create things while I was on Earth. Someone who knew about it, who'd read the research, who maybe even had access to some of the old papers about how it was made. Those lost papers."
Kurt smiled, a defeated smile. He put his hand over mine.
"It's just a theory, Vi."
I looked at him.
"They never found my mother's body, you know. Could never even say what caused her auto-drive car to run off the road. Some high-energy discharge was all they knew."
He licked his lips.
"We can't know anything, Vi. No one knows anything about anything. We can't get back to Earth, and we can't even communicate with them. Just…"
"You know I can't forget it."
"We'll just have to wait. And maybe one day we'll find out. That's all there is."

And there was a long pause. His hand was still on mine, I noticed.
"You didn't send me a ticket, did you?"
He shook his head.
"But I wish I had," he said.
And he leaned over, and kissed me. Kurt, who has known me longest and best of all. And at last it felt like coming home.

For the record, I would just like to make it clear that I *did*, in fact, go to 31 new places in August! Where I got lazy was writing about them. But, here is a list. And some pictures. I think this list is best read at very fast speed in a single breath, like the names of the evil Haman's ten wicked sons in the Megillah (that we should not waste more than one breath on them). I have been blogging-blocked for months because I didn't write up that whole project. Let us not waste more than one breath on it.

1. Milan

2. Bologna Ghetto

3. A sleeper train across Italy

4. The Secret Garden Party

5. Huntingdon Swimming Pool

6. Ravenna (yes yes, out of order already)

7. Hotel Chocolat factory shop. They would not let me take a photo inside. You can imagine a Willy Wonka factory if you like, but it really wasn't. Here was the outside.

8. Camp Bestival

9. A strange place up a hill in Poole

10. Ripping Yarns second hand bookshop

11. Corfe Castle, and a hotel in Corfe Castle where they made me feel the most embarrassed I have ever felt about wanting to have some dinner alone.

12. Green Valley grocery on Edgware Road, for the full Ottolenghi grocery experience. Here is a man making pita bread.

13. Dockland's Light Railway

14. Billingsgate fish market. This was awesome. Would visit again.

15. Cabot Estate chocolate shop

16. The Old Operating Theatre

17. Whitechapel Gallery

18. Rudyard Kipling's old house

19. The House of Lords

20. The Chelsea Physic Garden (clue: it's pretty, but not worth the trip unless you know the Latin names for plants and will get all excited to see rare ones in real life). Cloudmakers might like this, though:

21.The Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh

22. Behind the scenes at the Edinburgh literary festival

 

23. 86 restaurant in Hendon. It's kosher.

24. The Ivy Club. Oh yes.

25. Secondo: Bar/retro clothing in Clapham

26. BBC Media Centre. Had never been! (Have been there a lot since. There will be an exciting project to talk about next year.)

27. Holders Hill Park (another one of those 'round the corner from me, crazy I haven't been' places)

28. The Roald Dahl Museum. With my friend and her children. *Adorable*.

29. The Prince of Wales in Putney

30. Hmm. Now I know I had a list somewhere but it seems to run out at this point, although...

31. I'm nonetheless sure I finished it.

Oh well! I think we can *all agree* that I did a hell of a lot of things in August. And we need say no  more about it. Now just to get onto putting some account together of a talk I gave in Playful back in September. Hurrah!

 

Ah, it's all getting a bit B S Johnson out-of-order storytelling now. But if I want to get them all done in August there'll have to be more than one a day. So. The last time I saw the marvellous Rachel Rose Reid (go and look, she's lovely) was at Camp Bestival, where I was performing at the Hendricks Gin Carriage of Curiosities.

It's been that sort of summer, for some reason. Unlike last August when I had to give myself a kick up the bum to get out of the house, this summer I've started to long to be in the same place for more than a few days at a time.

Camp Bestival. As we commented at the time, all that really needs to be said about it is that there's a tent called "The Isle of Boden". It's very child-friendly, so there were many adorable moments of watching little girls in floaty dresses with fairy wings roll down slopes then run up and roll down again. But it was also pretty crowded (see above) and with a lot of kids who weren't terribly happy to be there and were loudly letting their parents know. The Secret Garden Party the previous weekend had been so amazing - and with so many naked people - that Camp Bestival couldn't really compete. 

I like the fact that I can now make a comparison though. Finally starting to understand what people mean by the different 'vibes' of different festivals. Secret Garden Party - would do again.

Yeah yeah, I know, I know. But, I have actually been going to places, I have the pictures all stored up, I still have hopes of getting them all done while we're still in August. I've got a week. Come onnnnnnnn.

OK so today I popped my Fringe cherry. Not watching: performing. I'm in Edinburgh for a couple of days for the book festival. (Speaking tomorrow at 10.15am about The Lessons and 5pm about computer games, come along if you're around!) The book world is pretty sedate. One might even say: civilized. There are no heckles at book events. There tend to be hotels, restaurants and sentences like "I saw Joan Bakewell in the yurt but I was too shy to say hello". (I really did, and I was, even though I've actually done an event with her before. Crazy I know.)

But the wonderful Rachel Rose Reid invited me to take part in her fringe event, The Crow's Nest at the Pleasance. I read a story to an audience of about 20 in a venue with a dripping ceiling and snacks of hula hoops being passed around. We don't get that in the book world. Or men taking their shirts off to sing pirate songs.

It was lovely, actually. Even with the dripping ceiling. The bit of writing that's like this - the bit where you're starting out, or trying out new ideas, all happens by yourself on a page. Not among sweet, interesting charismatic people - unlike authors, performers are charismatic - being patient with each other's false starts because we all understand that you can't start off at the London Palladium. I read a story from my email on my mobile phone and no one seemed to mind. Oh, and I've never been to the Pleasance before so, job done.

Sometimes, oh best beloveds, you have a bit of a day, at the end of what became a bit of a month, in the midst of what's turning into a bit of a year. And sometimes it turns out, at the end of that day, that you have inadvertently booked yourself for the night into a hotel in a rather dingy seaside town which, despite the name, you doubt the painter Rembrandt would actually have approved of.

(What can I say? The photographs of the swimming pool were deceptive and I forgot to check Trip Advisor.)

And on those occasions, sometimes you remember that the one thing a seaside town might have going for it is that it's right next to something which, despite their very best efforts, people have not yet succeeded in making entirely ugly. And then you might go down to the seashore. And watch the waves for an hour. And feel a little better.

And then you might stare at the hills surrounding the bay, dappled straw and ochre and olive and emerald. And you might wonder to yourself how a person could get up onto those sun-and-cloud-patterned slopes.

And then, if you were pursuing a project of this nature, you could find yourself thinking that if you just get into the car and try to drive up as many useful-seeming roads as you could, maybe you'd get at least closer to them.

Although all you find is a network of cul-de-sacs, lined with houses facing towards the bay like the monumental heads of Easter Island, you might feel that even an attempt to pursue the journey was worthwhile.

 

And then you might spot a pathway cut through the long grass at the edge of the road.

And you might follow it up the hill, as it twists around.

And you might find yourself suddenly in a place of surpassing loveliness, quiet but for the birdsong, on top of a hill, looking out at the Dorset countryside.

I find these days that I can tell I'm where I'm supposed to be if there are rabbits.

*Yes, I know I have missed out 6, 7 and 8. But I have been to 6, 7 and 8 places. There will be write-ups. It's post-modern to tell stories out of order.

 

Today I stood in a gazebo made of old tin cans, listened to folk music in a yurt, saw a sand snake (pictured), touched a live snake (not pictured) and spanked a man on the bottom with a 100-year-old truncheon. However, none of those things count, because they are new things, and, since I was at the Secret Garden Party yesterday too, not a new place. 

Instead, today's new place was the swimming pool of the LA Fitness gym in Huntingdon which I used this morning in one of those free one-day trials because the idea of going several days without a swim is largely intolerable to me.

I once heard Stella Duffy say (possibly attributed to someone else) that there are two kinds of people: those who look at a body of water and want to sail on it, and those who look at a body of water and want to swim in it. I'm definitely in the latter camp. Where other writers have their sacred 'writer's walk' (actually I do too, walks are good - look how many of these pieces of advice feature walking) I have swimming. I love how swimming clarifies, how the repetitiveness soothes, how thoughts become crystalized, how you find out how long you can *really* hold your breath for.

So, in Huntingdon, with all of the Secret Garden Party to play in, I sneaked off this morning for a swim. And in Bologna, I went to the most gorgeous underground swimming pool (literally underground, not, like, a secret swimming pool which is in hiding from the authorities and needs to keep a low profile) - it was marble-floored and U-shaped. I feel almost like mentioning a swimming pool is cheating really, because all water is in a way the same place, that's what good about it. It feels like coming home.

Not everything about a person is set, ever. People can always change. But it occurs to me that right now it's almost exactly 10 years since I moved to Manhattan where, when I was looking for somewhere to live, I had two stipulations: nearish to a library and a swimming pool. Some things remain the same.

Courtesy of the lovely people at Hendricks Gin, I'm spending this weekend at The Secret Garden Party festival in Cambridgeshire. I've never been to Burning Man, but I imagine it has this sort of vibe: a lot of weird and gorgeous costumes, strange art installations and more naked breasts than I've ever seen outside a women's changing room.

I'm trying to think of some pithy insight or anecdote from the festival, but my mind is a bit blurred by all this travelling around, seeing things, meeting people, changing context over and over. I am missing my August project from last year where the 'new places' were much more low key, didn't involve a lot of travel or seeing people's bodies painted bright blue or covered in glitter.

Not that it hasn't been lovely. We stood around at dusk this evening as hundreds of multicoloured balloons, and then lanterns were released and then they set a paper dirigible on fire. And Hendricks Gin sprayed us with pure oxygen, which made me giggle for about an hour afterwards, which the internet tells me is a known phenomenon. And I felt full of love for everyone in the world, even though I hadn't taken any drugs and it's not as far as I can tell a side effect of oxygen.

But lovely as it is, maybe insights come from small changes rather than enormous ones. Perhaps those thoughts which make you go "huh, maybe the reason I always do x is y" come when you've changed one tiny thing and can observe the effects it's had on you. Like, you know, the empirical method of scientific investigation. Change too many things and you find yourself going "oh, everything is new and different now, huh, OK, I don't know what to make of it." So, it's nice to inhale oxygen (although not, as I inevitably did afterwards, to look up the possible toxic side-effects of oxygen inhalation), and see various interesting things set on fire, but a huge set of new things just slip through your fingers somehow. It's the tiny changes that stick around.