I've been hammering away at the commentary of my PhD, and one of the small tiresomeness (as opposed to the large tiresomenesses, of which there are also plenty) which make it slow work is that 'writing' is such an ambiguous term. It can be an almost concrete noun - 'Some of the writing is fluent' - or an abstract noun - 'Writing is a creative practice' - or a verb - 'Writing stops me eating'. So quite often I want another word for the large body of continuous prose, the piece, that I've ended up with in A Secret Alchemy, for the work of... for the -

Yes, dammit, why can't I bring myself to call the novel I've ended up with a work of art?

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Here we are again. Day Two of Freshers’ Week. I got in early – though not as early as yesterday – and set our table up. Thank goodness no-one had taken anything overnight so I actually had stuff to put on the table. Even the tablecloth was still there – well, gosh. This year’s intake is very kind indeed. It wasn’t such a wild rush as yesterday either – so far, anyway. The queries were steady but not overwhelming ...


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First day of Freshers’ Week – say no more. Just wish I’d managed more sleep last night, but it was not too be – sinus troubles kept me awake and I now have a cold, dammit. Still, I got to work at about 8am and then didn’t stop rushing about like a demented gazelle (but not quite as nimble) until the finale. It’s madness out there, Carruthers … Though what a lovely bunch of first years – all totally charming and so far they’re laughing at my countless mistakes, thank goodness. I hope they’re as generous tomorrow. Because, as usual, I’m winging it. I do rather like our “Here to Help You” sashes though, sadly – slung over the shoulder, it makes us feel quite the thing, m’dears. Ho ho ...


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Marriott Attack:Time To End Pakistani Role In Other's Socalled War'

Pakistan is being punished for refusing to allow U.S. military boots on Pakistani soil, for the bombings in India, for the July 7 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, and for the failures of the American military in Afghanistan. The attack is a clear message to the Pakistani ruling elite: We will bring the war to your home. The Americans are now accusing army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani of complicity in bombing the Indian embassy in Kabul, an accusation that even the Indians dared not make. The General is a suspicious man now in the eyes of the Americans and the Zardari government. After its bungled attempt on the ISI, there is a possibility that the pro-U.S. Zardari government might try to remove Gen. Kayani and replace him with a more pliant army chief who can subordinate the Pakistani military to Washington’s agenda in the region. To end this mess, Pakistan needs to say goodbye to the coalition that Washington assembled in 2001 to occupy Afghanistan, a coalition that has shrunk in seven years to only U.S., U.K. and Pakistan.

By Mr Sajid Hussain
Investigative Journalist
Sunday, 21 September 2008.


International Desk:-------------------------->
The Americans had hoped that the pro-U.S. Zardari government in Islamabad would move to neutralize or disband the ISI and check the Pakistani military. They waited enough. The Zardari government did make a failed attempt on July 27 to clip the wings of ISI, which would have ended the agency’s external counterintelligence operations, crucial for the world’s sixth declared nuclear power and an important regional power that has legitimate security and strategic interests to protect. But it seems Mr. Zardari has decided not to risk alienating the country’s powerful military. Hours before the attack, President Zardari told a joint session of Parliament “We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism.” This statement ended the confusion, at least for now, on Zardari’s apparent reluctance to endorse army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s stern warning to Washington not to attack Pakistani soil.

The punishment for Pakistan is not limited to the Marriot hotel, which was more of a symbolic target, close to the houses of the President, Prime Minister, federal ministers and senior federal bureaucrats. Hours earlier, explosives-laden cars attacked two military convoys in the tribal belt. Eight hours after the Marriot attack, the power grid in Swat, northern Pakistan, was blown up. The frequency and intensity of attacks inside Pakistan have exceeded the attacks that U.S. military is facing in Afghanistan.
Which is in itself a strange thing. If the U.S. accusations are true and Islamabad is behind Afghan Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan, then why are the ‘Pakistani Taliban’ attacking Pakistani military targets? They should be happy that Pakistan is allegedly supporting the Afghan Taliban? But what is happening is the opposite: The so-called ‘Pakistani Taliban’ is punishing Pakistan, exclusively. The question is: Who benefits?
According to one Pakistani source, there are close to 8,000 foreigners in the country’s tribal belt at the moment. Before 9/11, they were under 1,000, and most of them were peaceful leftovers from the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s, grownup, aging, with local wives and children. Yes, Pakistan did have a domestic religious extremism problem but it consisted of small groups and not armies with endless supplies of money and sophisticated weapons and, apparently, advance knowledge of Pakistani military movements.
There is no question that many of these 8,000 foreigners are agents of foreign intelligence agencies who have infiltrated the Pakistani tribal belt from Afghanistan. This is not Hollywood. During the 2001 war against the Taliban government in Kabul, U.S. military used special ops teams made up of Pashtun look-alikes complete with perfect Pashtun accents, assisted by local help, purchased in U.S. dollars, in the areas of their deployment.

In Pakistani tribal belt, the numbers of foreigners dramatically increased in the years 2002 to 2004. These foreigners used the natural local anger at Pakistani military’s alliance with U.S. to work up the locals against Islamabad. The area remained quiet for most of the time after the 2001 war until it finally erupted in insurgency led by a series of ‘rebel Mullahs’ who caught the Pakistani government and military by surprise.

Karzai’s security and intelligence network is populated with strongly anti-Pakistan officers. The Indians received an American nod to establish an elaborate intelligence and military training setup in Afghanistan. Indians and Karzai’s men are directly involved in training, arming and financing rebels and insurgents and sending them into Pakistan. There is a full backing for an ethnic insurgency in southwestern Pakistan where China is building a strategic seaport. There are reports that the Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, is helping the Indians and Karzai’s security in destabilizing Pakistan’s western parts. The Israeli ambassador in New Delhi admitted in February that Israel offered crucial help to India during the Kargil war in 1999 which was the only reason India managed to repeal what appeared to be a surprise Pakistani victory. The Israelis have built a close defense relationship with India ever since and are also helping India perfect its occupation methods in Kashmir.

Pakistanis don’t have evidence that shows direct U.S. involvement in this anti-Pakistan campaign. But the circumstantial evidence is more than overwhelming. Afghanistan could not have turned into a staging ground for anti-Pakistan covert operations involving several players with out Washington’s nod. U.S. military has also been deliberately attacking those militant tribals inside Pakistan who are pro-Islamabad, and sparing those militants who only fight Pakistani military. Also, U.S. government has refused to designate the ethnic insurgency in southwestern Pakistan as terrorism. One very interesting piece of information that points the fingers to both India and U.S. is that these shady ‘Pakistani Taliban’ have focused their efforts in the past four years on attacking Chinese citizens and Chinese interests inside Pakistan. No U.S. or NATO citizens have been attacked.
The Afghan Taliban –who are the real Taliban before this American-orchestrated insurgency in Pakistani border areas was deceptively termed ‘Taliban’ – have never attacked Pakistan despite Islamabad’s policy change after 9/11. In fact, senior Taliban officials, like its ambassador to Islamabad Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, never said anything against Pakistan despite having been captured and handed over to the Americans by Islamabad.
There is no question that Washington destabilized Pakistan using the same methods it had perfected in South America in the 1970s. As Pakistan faced instability on the border, Washington moved in late 2006 to destabilize the country from the inside. A discredit former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was convinced to end her self-exile and enter into a U.S.-brokered deal with a weakened President Musharraf in exchange for endorsing the U.S. agenda and having her stolen millions whitewashed. The fast paced political change threw Pakistan off-balance and resulted in massive internal upheaval that continues until today, almost ending Pakistan’s remarkable economic rise of the past decade.
Once Pakistan was trapped, U.S. media sprung into action and mounted a massive propaganda about Pakistan becoming ripe for an Iraq-like U.S. intervention to neutralize its nuclear weapons and to ‘save’ the country from turning into a haven for al-Qaeda.
The entire purpose of this anti-Pakistan campaign is to remove the Pakistani hurd

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In Nothing Remotely Trivial I was thinking about how moving the subject and setting of a novel away from the readers' world - in time, or space - can help to make sure the reader isn't snared by the familiar stuff of here-and-now and so held on the surface of the story. But it came up in the comments that language is another way of doing the same thing.

It can be words, as well as time or space, that make the familiar stuff unfamiliar, new, slightly different or slightly off-kilter, or strip off a layer to show me the depths. The words don't have to be weird or minimal or all-but-incomprehensible, though they may be, and if any of those mean it's also horribly, self-consciously clever, then I'm certainly not interested. It may simply be that each word is so exactly right that everything in the novel appears as things do on a day when the rain-cleared air, or the mood, or the company you're in, strips away the usual smog and shows everything afresh, extra-vivid, not transformed so much as more itself. Language that works like that give the ideas a texture I want to run my mental fingers over, makes the voices sound in my imagination as clearly as a radio play, makes my body-sense imagine the press or distance of theirs;

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I treated myself to a writing magazine yesterday on my day in the city, waiting for my new glasses for driving – preparing for my new wee car. So, I settled down to read some of the mag and was horrified by a ghost story in it; a competition winner that would never have got near the final five if I’d been the judge. It wasn’t seriously bad and most of the flaws, well the ones that bothered me, were in the first five paras; I had to do a double-take almost immediately and found myself talking out loud in disbelief:


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A lovely lazy lie-in today, hurrah. And I have not done anything too strenuous. Not that I ever do, really. But I thought I ought to say it. After all, I need to conserve my energy for the existential horrors of the week ahead, AKA Freshers' Week or The Week Of Hell. As I have termed it on the kitchen calendar.

Lord H also wins Husband of the Week competition (as always, naturally ...) by rustling up a cooked breakfast, consisting of scrambled eggs, ham, mushrooms and tomato (for me - he hates tomato) on toast, that was at least a zillion times better than my poor attempts of last week. It was seriously scrummy and if I hadn't married him already, then I definitely would now. Ah, I've always known who the real chef in the household was ...


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Lord H and I have spent a wonderful day up in London visiting The British Museum and enjoying the wonderful and sparky Hadrian exhibition. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area, but do book a ticket. However, both Lord H and I are now worried about our ear lobes - as we have the same diagonal mark on them that Hadrian had, which is apparently a sign of heart disease. Oh goody, another medical worry - just what we need, eh!... Anyway, I'm actually halfway through the exhibition book, as Lord H kindly bought it for me a couple of weeks ago, but I also bought the gift-book small version while I was there. Finished that on the train. I do love Hadrian. As you can tell. What an interesting chap and of course so wonderful Greek in his ideas. In oh so many ways ...


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I’m always behind the times, out of the loop, with no idea what’s going on… that’s probably why I write historical fiction, because if stuff has happened in the past, then I just about stand a chance of keeping up with it.

Contemporary fiction is too mind-boggling – I mean, all that research!


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Most writers start secretly. Then it evolves from a habit to a hobby and a few people know, then you take it seriously, learn your trade, learn (usually painfully) something about how the industry works, and more people know, and eventually - maybe, just maybe - the world knows. And one day you wake up and realise that this is what you do, and such is the nature of our society that is has therefore become what you are. My brain's gone a bit demob-happy, what with it being Friday and all, and the end of a funny mixed-bag of a week at that. But I realise that Being a Writer - perhaps even Being an Author, which is a different thing - is now the fabric of things. It's part of the texture of just about everything that happens:


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