my writing

Tag: 1970s

  • Albi in 1976: pages from ‘Diggers and Dreamers’.

    Chapter 1: Albi I watch the cream and red train disappear slowly around the long bend. The last I see of Jane is her hand sticking out of the window, her fingers spread out like the ribs of a broken fan. I stare along the empty line until the noise of the train dies away…

  • Leonard Cohen at the Opera House, Manchester, Tues, 17 June, 2008

    Dark stage, brightly lit at the back – I expect a Manhattan skyline. The band take their places. LC quickly follows, there’s no spinning it out, he’s right on time, getting to business. He bounds on, he’s up for it, dapper in a suit and fedora, both grey, a double-breasted suit, wide trousers, grey shirt…

  • Cycling the Green Meridian: 7

    Day 7: St-Ouen to Fleury-Mérogis, 53 miles. The flea market. Reuniting two lovers. Suzanne’s grave. A hectic ride across Paris. Satie’s flat. The undertaker. Erik’s grave. Cultural tourism. Gabrielle. The bell not pressed. Depression in a metal cell. I eat breakfast in the bar. Bright sun outside, washed streets, deep shadows, few people. A bar…

  • Return to La Balme …

    Day 20, 19 June, 2015 : Albi to Coupiac, 56 miles. Return to the hills. Our village revealed. The carved stone buried. The wild boy reconsidered. Our house. The one-armed man. The Virgin’s veil. The threshing-machine. Camping by the lake. Pot au feu with the young couple. I wake early. Today I will be at…

  • Diggers & Dreamers

    Rural Languedoc. The South of France. Summer 1976. “There is another world, but it is in this one” – and the characters in this novel, in their different ways, mean to find it. Kris and Jane are an idealistic young couple who have bought La Balme, a run-down smallholding near Albi, city of the Cathars.…

  • Connie Converse’s disappearance on 10 August, 1974

    ‘You don’t go out of your way to make yourself something you’re not.’ After her return from England in January 1972, Ms Converse was adrift. She wrote, ‘the basic nerves and will by which I had always been able to survive my difficulties may have worn out or broken, and might not be easily reparable.’…

  • Connie Converse’s 100th birthday

    Between 1 August, the 100th anniversary of her birth, and 10 August, when fifty years ago she disappeared, I want to celebrate the many lives of Elizabeth Connie Converse. In 1944, age 20, she dropped out of her prestigious New England college, where she was the star student, and went to New York City, alone…