My begging bowl was full - half the course fee was paid by the Open University for professional development. What I wanted from the mist, which didn't lift from Tuesday to Friday morning, was, well, blank pages.
By that I mean I needed to fill pages, which I haven't been doing. So why not try a short story. And in those three days, yes, I did and I cut it by a quarter. It felt good to cut. It felt nervewracking to read it aloud. Pregnant woman with swan - it's the title of a print by Joseph Beuys.
In those days at the Hurst, on the border of England and Wales, a house surrounded by trees, I walked in the morning or afternoon. The woods were noisy with chainsaws on one day, wet and streaming every day, busy with birds on another day. I found a line of nesting boxes like terraced houses, I found the Hurst's monkey puzzle tree and its redwoods.
In the verges, wild strawberries were in bud but everything else was two weeks behind Brighton. By the pond, there was a carpet of ransoms.
Three and a half days go by quickly. Four breakfasts, four nights sleep. But the tutors, Ann Sansom and Chris Wakling worked us hard, set us off on endless writing threads, shared ideas for tutoring - filling what space was left in the begging bowl.
There was no internet, limited phone reception. At the end of the week, I went to Subway in Craven Arms before my train to pick up emails. I'd missed nothing much.
In three and a half days the food I left in the fridge at home wasn't even off. There was one letter on the table. A couple of missed calls.
I came home with a short story on a memory stick and three and a half days of ideas I may go back to, but don't feel I have to. They came, after all, from looking into the mist.
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