¦ dialling in from private villa on remote mountains of Cyprus ¦
09:15 Hrs, Thursday 15th May 2008. I'm at a table of pale wood, long enough to seat 10 people and fits easily within the cavernous space of the main living area.
Laptop is in front of me, Spitting Games by Snow Patrol playing on random.
A green glazed mug empty of tea, exposing white ceramic interior. Numerous sheets of paper scattered around me in an arc, all of them covered in nearly illegible scrawls...the rescue solution for the new novel, EDGE.
To my left are a collection of deep and comfortable sofas, a flat screen TV, every window covered by a closed venetian blind. In front of me, and to my right are sliding French doors, volumous curtains of cream muslin pulled open to reveal the view beyond. To my right is a bright expanse of a large swimming pool, beyond that, nothing but a horizon of yellow grass...stiff and brittle from the heat of the sun, and a scattering of stunted green trees. This is the landscape of the high hill the villa is perched upon. Ahead of me though, above the rim of my laptop screen, through the glass of the French doors, bordered by the cream muslin, is a breathtaking view of rural beauty... yellow, yellow and more yellow... with green lines formed by trees or hedgerows, stretching away for two or three miles to the vast expanse of the sea... right now it's lost in a heat haze, a white mist barely seperating the sea from the white intensity of the sky... the sun is hammering down, baking the air and land and everything on it.
I've been up since seven'ish, the first time i've been out of bed before 9 AM since getting to Cyprus last Saturday night. And the first time I've sat down to spend some serious time on the computer. Everything up to now has been paper notes...sitting outside on a sun-lounger...perched on the tiled balcony overlooking...the world.
There was a thunderstorm last night. Eye-burning flashes of light from way up in the clouds, all around for miles... a few vivid forks streaking down near the villa, deep rumbles and booms, but nowhere near as jaw-dropping as the massive electrical storm of South France 2006.
Time has ceased to have any meaning. The days have blurred into a simple continuum marked only by day and by night. During the day we live outside. During the night we live inside. We've barely spoken a word to anybody. There is nobody. I've shaken hands and exchanged broken English with a goat-herder, blackened and wrinkled by years in the sun, over the low chain link fence marking the boundary of the property...
There's a slight irony in writing a novel set within the deep freeze of a New Zealand winter, whilst sitting here in the heat of a south Med summer.
Over & over
Djr