From Toronto to London - Mind the Gap
It’s been a busy time. I’m writing from London, where Kirk and I are doing a two-month house swap with friends who are in writing, film, tv and theatre like us. This is one of the first images that struck me as we got on the train to make our way to the place where we’d be staying for the next two months: MIND THE GAP. Yes, it’s a caution to stay alert and safe. But right now, it also feels like a sign to take note of the opportunity of being away from our regular surroundings. Mind the (wonderful) gap.
The house swap has been a long time in the making, and was meant to give us all a change of scenery and a chance to see our children. Kirk and I have an adult child living in the UK (our son Emmett), and our fellow house swappers have an adult child living in Toronto. What an opportunity to spend some quality time with family.
Emmett plays soccer (or football) for Chichester City FC over here, and it’s been a delight to venture forth every Saturday to see him and his team play pre-season friendlies as they get ready for the fast-approaching 2024-2025 season.
Here he is playing a pre-season friendly vs Broadbridge Heath FC, on the outskirts of Horsham.
But for me and Kirk, the house swap was also an unmissable chance to continue developing several writing projects that have ties to the UK and Europe.
As is typical of us, we have way too many creative balls in the air, but here, at least, we’re able to advance several projects while being in the right geographical place for inspiration and research.
For all the other equally important gigs, we can work remotely, which is so great. All it has meant is making very very sure we get the time difference right, because we have people we’re working with in multiple time zones. There’s been a lot of counting on fingers, I’ll tell you.
And lastly, a house swap was a way to get this work done, and visit family, without great expense other than air fare and medical coverage. (Although I will say, oof, the exchange rate blows at the moment. $1 CDN = .56 pence, or, said the other way, £1 = $1.78 CDN. The prices look right at first glance when you see them at the Tesco or M&S Food Hall, and then you do the calculation in your head and remember that you’re not looking at Canadian dollars, you’re looking at British pounds, and you need to add .78 to every dollar. Yikes. The good news is it makes you think twice about buying anything you don’t need.)
So we left Toronto for this grand adventure to London on June 25, just over a month ago.
The frenzy getting ready to go was real. Here’s what things looked like just before the packing started…THE DAY BEFORE WE LEFT.
Yes, we left the packing until the day before. There were about a billion things we needed to do to get ready that meant getting our bags packed was a scramble. We figured if we had our passports, boarding passes, computers, phones, chargers and at least a few changes of underwear, we were set, and anything else we’d forgotten could get bought (thank goodness we haven’t had to buy any missing things, though - ref the exchange rate issue above).
Very soon after we arrived, we connected with fellow Canadians at Canada Day celebrations in Trafalgar Square. That was great, not only because we got to see, among other acts, Allan Doyle from Great Big Sea, but because we were very kindly invited into the VIP tent where we met a few people with whom we got to chatting about our various projects, which is always so helpful. Freelancing is a wild ride, and it’s hard to always find the energy to push all the Sisyphean boulders up the hill. But when kind, experienced, smart people offer advice and help, the relief and appreciation is profound.
Plus there was free poutine. So it was a happy Canada Day indeed. Here’s Kirk in the tent:
Best t-shirt spotted at the celebration:
Here are the projects we’re working on that are UK-specific:
We’re up to having toured our theatre show The Knitting Pilgrim over 85 times, and are looking for opportunities to bring it to England. We have a few irons in the fire.
You may remember that I received Canada Media Fund development funding to develop my novel, At Last Count, into a TV series. So while we are here, I am doing research into finding an Irish co-production partner for the series with whom we can work to keep developing the property.
Kirk and I continue to prepare for our production of Spycraft in the fall of 2025. About a Canadian woman who spies on the Nazis for Churchill’s Special Operations Executive during WWII by knitting code into ordinary garments, the play is half set in the UK, so we feel like it’s a pretty good fit for a tour here.
We’re planning a research trip to the Victoria and Albert museum to see its collection of historical WWII knitting patterns, since Kirk will be designing the knitted costumes and props in the show.
And lastly, a few months ago, I gratefully received an Ontario Arts Council recommender grant from Invisible Publishing (the awesome publisher that released At Last Count) to work on a new book.
It will be a retelling of my favourite book of all time, The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s original tale is told from the point of view of Michael Henchard, an ego-driven, very flawed man—but my book will take the point of view of his daughter, Elizabeth-Jane.
People who know me know this is not my first attempt at retelling this story. In 2018, I wrote a play adaptation of the original book, The Women of Casterbridge, retelling the tale from the point of view of the key women in the story. It was developed through the Ergo Pink Festival, an amazing event in Toronto conceived by Anna Pappas to help women and marginalized gender playwrights get new works off the ground, run through her theatre company, Ergo Arts Theatre. My play was dramaturged by playwright and dramaturge Beverley Cooper, and the festival rehearsed and performed a staged reading, directed by Diana Leblanc, and performed by a stellar cast.
I’ve never gotten The Mayor of Casterbridge out of my head, though, and with my new interest in writing books, I dreamt up a pretty fun, soapy, twisty-turny way to reconceive Hardy’s original. The working title is The Maiden of Newfoundland—and I’m hoping to release the book in installments, just as Hardy did originally, with all the short chapters eventually being offered as a full novel.
So that is my morning focus during PJ Writing (my wonderful daily 7:30 am writing group run by Sue Reynolds, which you can find out about here – join us to play in the writing sandbox if you are so moved)—although in England, 5 hours ahead, it’s actually a 12:30 pm affair.
Being here also enables us to take a research trip down to Dorchester, the town in Dorset (Hardy’s fictional Wessex) which is the real version of his fictional Casterbridge. That research trip is coming up, and I will tell you all about it. Needless to say, I can’t wait.
Fun extra bits
Beverley Cooper, who has dramaturged every play I’ve written or co-written, has not one but two plays out this summer. If you’re in Ontario, check them out: The Trials of Maggie Pollock, directed by our old friend and creative mind extraordinaire, Ann-Marie Kerr, at the Blyth Festival, running Jul 31-Aug 29; and Jim Watts: Girl Reporter, running Jul 30-Aug 24, at 4th Line Theatre.
At Lidl, the least expensive grocery store within spitting distance of where we are living in London, you can get fresh vegetables, fruits, food, and a welding helmet, if that’s a thing you need on an average Tuesday. And for £22.99 no less. Hurry, though. It’s a limited offer.
Sending a postcard to Canada costs an unbelievable £2.50. That’s $4.45 CDN. Conversely, a pint of Ruddles at Wetherspoon’s is £1.79. Which do you think Kirk would rather spend his money on? (The answer is both.)
While I write my face off over here, Kirk is working on a new cushion pattern of a cardinal, which he’s test swatching as we take the train to visit Emmett on the weekends. This will be a companion piece to the Henslow’s Sparrow cushion he created in honour of the tiny bird in At Last Count.
And finally, this is my writing space here in London, with de rigeur nectar of the gods and writing companion (Diet Coke). Pinch me.
More to come soon.
Claire