Arvon Calling

Ted Huges looking down on us all

After the relief and euphoria of arrival, Earl grey tea with walnut cake, a pretty bedroom, stunning views and rain on what was proving to be one of the hottest days of the year in every other part of Britain except Heptonstall in Yorkshire, I decided it was worth booking into Lumb Bank if only for the scenery and ambience. If I managed a spot of writing, so much the better, and all under the watchful eye of a faintly disapproving Ted Hughes.

Looking around we were a mixed bunch. In age somewhere between thirty and sixtyish I guessed, with a fair smattering of rural and urban, from Orkney to Stoke Newington, with at least two Welsh farmers, (one retired), a surprising number of chain smokers, a smattering of hard drinking journalists, keen to write fiction of more than 2000 words, a sad faced accountant, a brace of bright young lawyers and a lovely girl who confessed to having once set her laptop on fire when she opened the lid onto a scented candle. All women except for a quietly spoken pornographer from Edinburgh who dabbled in web based errotica of the S & M variety. I was told later by a regular Arvonite that you always got one of those. She maintained their inclusion was so common as to be compulsory.
The two contrasting views from my room
Though not an outgoing type myself I was on nodding terms with the woman I’d shared a taxi with from Hebden Bridge, who at sixty feared she was too old to write fluffy chic lit, so had opened a farm shop just in case. (Later to prove the unlikely author of a witty sex scene involving an over enthusiastic lover called Bill the Bonker, nail varnish and a chicken shed, but more of that another day.)


At the end of my first meeting with the other Arvonites, before we’d even been introduced to the tutors or explored the possibilities of the garden, I realized booze would prove significant.
“Wine to accompany supper is provided on the first night,” we were told, and any more had to be ordered from the village.
Julie, later known as The Wine Monitor, grabbed a sheet of paper.
“Jot down what you’ll drink over the remaining four days and add your money to the kitty accordingly.” Determined to remain clear headed for the tasks to come I scribbled ‘2 bottles, red’ and handed in my cash, feeling hopelessly outclassed by the 6, 8 or even 10 bottles noted down by the majority of my fellow students. Clearly writing exciting commercial prose wouldn't be the only pleasurable item on this Lumb Bank agenda.

The garden
Our tutors, Judy and Katie, joined the group for dinner and after coffee and a few mutterings as to the meanness of the evening's wine ration, we settled back to take in the week’s programme.
An early riser, I was surprised to find morning sessions weren’t to start before 10 am but I kept this to myself, allowing us time to write in the morning I presumed. We were to start with dialogue, viewpoint and other general stuff. Our intoductory task, to write a first meeting between two characters, getting over a sense of scene and place, with dialogue…. Show not tell and steer clear of adverbs, we were warned. A doddle I thought innocently, unaware my 'viewpoint' was about to be slapped down in no uncertain manner. Never again will I include 'shiver' and 'pleasurable' in the same sentence.