Snow. And the Holly Naming Conversation Redux

It's snowing again. We've had a foot of snow so far today. This is the kind of thing we would regard as a Real Snowstorm if we hadn't the 22 inch snowfall in 24 hours in December. I just went out at midnight and shovelled the path to my house, then I galumphed through the snowdrifts with the dogs and shovelled next door, because I was feeling virtuous.

The dogs have done their part by sitting exactly wherever I needed to shovel next.

I figured the exercise was a good thing, too.

A few people wrote in and asked whether the fact that I have a wife now who is 15 years younger than me has anything to do with the exercise/eating healthy/shedding weight thing. And of course it does, but not in the way you might imagine.

She liked me just fine the way I was. (We'd been together for two years, after all.)

But definitely one of the factors involved was that while I was in Australia I started thinking a lot about how I really like this being married, and how much I like being with Amanda, and how I want it to go on as long as possible. Which took me to the point of realising that I owe it to her and to me to be in the best shape I can be in twenty five years' time. As I said in that last post, my grandfathers were both infirm old men when they died. And they were in their early seventies. My father was in great shape when he died in his mid-seventies (well, in great shape up until his heart stopped beating, anyway). He exercised. They didn't. They would have stared at you, puzzled, if you'd suggested it.

When I got back from Australia I read a bunch of books on living better longer, which all said pretty much the same thing (Eat more vegetables! Exercise! Eat less rubbish and did we mention the vegetables? And honestly, we weren't kidding about the exercise!) And it became very apparent from all the reading that being in good shape in twenty-five years from today has to start with changing things now, and that there was no magic pill I could take that would do any of it for me.

I figure it's an investment in quality of life. And while I could obviously still spontaneously combust, crash a car or be eaten by space-goats in that time, I cannot see any downside to getting as healthy as I can right now and staying that way as long as I can.

Also, as a side-effect of exercising, I'm getting to listen to Hugh Dickson read Bleak House, which is keeping me listening, and, more importantly, keeping me exercising. (It's interesting: I realised that I listen to things in a different way to the way I would read them. I was listening to Chapter Ten today when I noticed that the alternate, third person chapters are all in the present tense, something I would have spotted long time ago if I were looking at the words on the paper.)

And as a secondary side-effect, I get to wear jeans that have been too small for me and unworn for so long that they have now become Vintage Clothing.

While out exercising (well, walking the dogs. I tried running in the snow, but it was over ice, and I fell down a lot)I tried to get a photo of the lamppost, shining in the woods in a snowstorm, but the cameraphone camera was not quite up to it, and the wind was whipping the snow around. So the best I got was this:



Earlier today, when we just had a few inches of snow, I took this photo, which I like mostly because Lola seems to be materialising out of the snow, and because she looks so amazingly goofy, like something half-gargoyle and half-dog.



I also got a good shot of the disapproving tree, looking very disapproving.


...

On April 27th I'll be in New York for National Public Radio's Selected Shorts. I'll be hosting and reading a story.

Tickets are going fast -- the link and information is at http://www.symphonyspace.org/event/6372-selected-shorts-magical-realism-the-world-of-marvelous-stories-with-neil-gaiman. I'm really looking forward to it. No, I don't know which story it'll be.

...

Hi Neil-

I'd like to suggest the following greatest hit:
Monday, May 31, 2004
In Which the author finally has The Conversation with his daughter...
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/05/in-which-author-finally-has.asp

I realise each of my children (two girls!) is a unique creature full of her very own lifetime of surprises. And though I know I'm doing my job when I'm encouraging them to be the best Sophia or Olivia they can be, I selfishly hope that they'll also grow to enjoy and appreciate many of the same things that my wife and I do.

They're not old enough yet for us to have had that "Oh dad, I do love you," light-bulb moment, but when they burst into a chorus of "I'm Sticking with You" over breakfast, I'm given hope that we're doing something right.

Thanks for all the stories and for sharing so much with us on such a regular basis!

Dave

I love seeing what people pick as their favourites. So often they're blog entries I would never have thought of. So from May 31st 2004, here's In Which the author finally has The Conversation with his daughter...

Pretty good day.

Woke up, grabbed notebook before I got out of bed and wrote several lyrics for the Wolves in the Walls opera, including one that made me laugh called "Smash Something Breakable". Exercised, said hullo to the garden. Then spent the afternoon writing the novel, which went from completely despondent "this is awful the whole thing is unusable I have no idea what I'm doing" to, a thousand words later, "I suppose it's not that bad really and I think I know what happens next," and there are worse places to be.

This evening I had a very pleasant time with Holly, which began with her mentioning how much she liked the song "Across the Universe" and me playing her the version of the song by Laibach, which has always been my favourite. "Dad," she said, happily, "This was the version of the song I knew as a little girl. You used to play it. I always wondered why the Beatles one sounded different from the way I expected. I mean you could understand the words for a start." Then we sat in front of the computer for a few hours and I made her a playlist of more songs she had loved as a small girl, the ones she'd remembered and the ones she'd forgotten, which led to our having The Conversation. You know, the one I've known was coming for the last almost-nineteen years.

I dragged songs from her childhood over to the playlist -- "Barcelona" and "Nothing Compares 2 U" and "I Don't Like Mondays" and "These Foolish Things" and then came Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side". "You named me from this song, didn't you?" said Holly as the first bass notes sang. "Yup," I said.

Lou started singing.

Holly listened to the first verse, and for the first time, actually heard the words.

"Shaved her legs and then he was a she...? He?"

"That's right," I said, and bit the bullet. We were having The Conversation. "You were named after a drag queen in a Lou Reed song."

She grinned like a light going on. "Oh dad. I do love you," she said. Then she picked up an envelope and wrote what I'd just said down on the back, in case she forgot it.

I'm not sure that I'd ever expected The Conversation to go quite like that.

Labels: and yet more snow, exercise, Selected Shorts, what I said to Holly and vice versa

Holly and corridors

My daughter Holly is here. She has been persuaded to take her coat off. She says she needs to be mentioned more in this blog. She says that I ruin the whole effect, however, if I actually point out that she just said that I should devote the spotlight to her here. She says she didn't actually say that and that my innocent paraphrase is in fact all hellish lies.

Holly would like to say something.

Maddy Gaiman has the best sister ever. Happy Easter, Maddy.

(Me: That's it? Her: Yup.)

So far today I've been interviewed by the French, done a Kaffeklatch (where 8 people who had their names drawn from a hat had coffee with me, although I drank tea) a Guest of Honour Reading and Talk, and another interview. Still to come today, a Wolves in the Walls reading for kids (and adults who have kidnapped kids and are using them as props to get in with) and another autographing. And an interview with Romanians.

Neil

I was interested in your throwaway remark on navigating the London Hotel. "It's a terrific convention (in a hotel the geography of which I cannot quite grasp)"

My wife and I spent our Silver Wedding anniversary in Vienna, and despite my reading up beforehand, I felt ill at ease using the underground trains as I couldn't get my bearings and felt terribly edgy for the first day and a half.

Once we walked around the inner ring of Vienna I had my bearings and was able to feel psychologically much better. Weird huh?

Have you read "The Art of Travel" by Alain de Botton? His practical philosophy is so interesting and makes me realise I'm not alone in feeling edgy on arrival at a new place - not for fear of attack - but insecure in the geography.


Truth to tell, I quite like new places, and don't really mind unfamiliar geographies. This hotel, on the other hand is something else.

I am used to sensible, Euclidean spaces, in which if you go through enough 90 degree angles you wind up where you started. Try that here and see where it gets you. It reminds me enough of the description of the unlikely convention hotel in Diana Wynne Jones's DEEP SECRET that I have to ask her if it was based on this hotel.

From the outside it seems almost normal. Then the corridors begin...

Labels: eastercon, geographies, what I said to Holly and vice versa

Speak of the devil...

Holly and I had gone to see The Simpsons movie together. We drove back not saying anything.

After a while, Holly sighed. "You brought that on yourself, Dad. You wrote the bit in your blog today about not being recognised and not wanting to be famous. And now that happens. See?"

"I could move," I said. "I could head off to the Scottish Highlands. Or Patagonia. I could absolutely go to Patagonia and leave no forwarding address."

"Oh dad," said Holly. And then she pointed out, "You aren't allowed to vanish mysteriously until Maddy's eighteen."

"I could wear a hat," I said, a bit desperately.

"It wouldn't do any good," she said. And she may be right. And if I brought it on myself by writing my previous blog entry then maybe if I don't actually talk about it on this one it won't happen again...

...


The Birdchick and her husband, "Three Dollar" Bill Stiteler, were over today and we went out to the bees, checked on things, and brought some honey home. I'm sure that Sharon will document our bee day on her remarkable blog -- it's a terrific record of events. I just wanted to say how wonderful the honey tastes, fresh from the hive. And it tastes different to the last batch -- less piney, more fruity. I hope we'll have lots of honey to give to friends at the end of the year, and that we'll have enough to keep us going until next summer.

We're already planning a couple more hives, and today we started to plant wildflowers because, well, it will make the bees happy next year...

I told Sharon I thought she should take her bee-learning experiences and put them into a book. I hope she does.

...

You know, the funny thing is that LOST DANES FEARED FOOLISH DEATH DURING SCOTTISH STROLL could as easily be a headline for Beowulf as it is for Stardust. But the Danes in question here is Claire and not a bunch of Hrothgar's men directionally challenged and in trouble.

And -- for those of you who wrote in wondering about the scene in the trailer where Charlie Cox ("Cox somehow manages to walk a tightrope between matinee-idol dashing and puckish whimsy, as the film veers from a childlike innocence to an absurdist, Candide-style picaresque." L.A. Times) and Claire Danes ("as the short-tempered star, Danes hurls insults with the lethal accuracy of a screwball heroine" L.A. Times) meet for the first time.

They were -- in the trailer anyway -- apparently the best of friends. But here's a taster of the actual scene: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2007/08/03/exclusive-clip-stardust/

It's educational comparing it to the way the scene is cut in the trailer.

...

The retailer who had over ordered the Charles Vess Stardust statues wrote to let me know that he had sold them all within minutes of me posting the link, and to say thank you. I got the impression that he could have sold his statues many times over, so I went to Charles Vess's site, at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/105
and found the link to
http://www.statuetoys.com/stardustmoonstarstatue.html where they're selling it for $60 off, at $134.90. But that's a pre-order price, and the thing ships very soon, so you may want to move fast.

I also checked Dreamhaven's wonderful Neil Gaiman & Friends shop, at http://neilgaiman.net/ but it didn't look like they had it listed yet.

...

Pam Noles has been my minder at San Diego Comic-Con for almost a decade, and the only reason I survived the last three Comic-cons that I've been a Guest of Honour at is that Pam makes sure that I did.

People think I tell Pam what to do at Comic Con, because I am the writer and she is the one-woman entourage, but actually, it's the other way round. If you ever find yourself a guest at Comic-con and Pam looks after you Do Not Sign Things For People When You Aren't Meant To be Signing Them, otherwise you'll find yourself turning up on her hilarious blog described as "The Occasionally Disobedient Guest". You can read about it at : http://andweshallmarch.typepad.com/and_we_shall_march/2007/08/tidbits-from-th.html

(The bit where I was signing for people while, literally, running, was on the Sunday, as I left the Jack Kirby panel and ran for a plane.) (Which reminds me, a few people wrote in asking about the Kirby story I described as one of my favourites --I just checked and it was The Losers in Our Fighting Forces 153. )

(And my Comic-con "Spotlight On..." panel is described at http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=11485)

...

I'm interviewed in the LA Times about Stardust and other stuff, and they gathered quotes from Matthew Vaughn, Claire Danes and Roger Avary: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-ca-stardust5aug05,1,7113938.story?coll=la-entnews-movies

(The photo was taken through a glass door, which is why the image is refracted so oddly, and the unusual expression on my face is me looking at the photographer and thinking, "Er, is that going to work...?")

And, more interestingly (for me, at least) Charlie Cox is also interviewed in the LA Times -- http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-ca-charlie5aug05,0,1998613.story.

Labels: charlie cox, claire danes, jack kirby, pam noles, trailers, what I said to Holly and vice versa, why I am not allowed to run away to Patagonia or somewhere equally as unlikely