By Anne Perry

This is begun in a hotel in Glasgow Airport, on my way to Italy tomorrow.  I have a new Italian publisher and they are launching their first book of mine at Courmayeur, in the Italian Alps, right near the border with France and Switzerland.  Every other time I have been to Italy it has been absolutely marvellous, so even though I will be there only two days, I am looking forward to it.

When I get back I shall remain at home until the end of January, unless something totally unexpected happens.  I have a great deal of work planned.  I really need to write the whole of my Christmas novella for next year, and begin the fourth book in the World War One series.  It seems not long since I was beginning the first, with great trepidation, and by late summer 2005 I will have only one more of the five to go.

The prophecy about time speeding up seems to be frighteningly true!  I ask people when something happened, thinking it was recently, and discover it was four or five years.  Does anybody else find this also?

Our branch has been planning, practicing and working hard on costumes, scenery etc. for a play to put on for the public.  It is on a theme perfect for Christmas, and is also full of eternal truths.  I am really sorry it is to be performed while I have no professional choice but to be away.  From everything I hear, it is very powerful, and I know for certain that they have put months of work, struggle, friendship and imagination into doing it.  They have already been richly rewarded in new understanding and deeper care for each other.  It is a very moving thing to see that, whatever the rest of the world thinks of the performance.  But I believe it will be very well received – they may even have to turn people away, the bookings are so good.

But I think the greatest blessing, and lesson, is how much more we care for and understand people with whom we have worked on a labour of love.  Last Sunday one sister bore testimony of how she had come to know and trust people in a deeply personal way to whom she had not previously been so close.  She is the one working the hardest, because she is in charge.  I know for certain how many people now appreciate her talents, which are considerable, who had not before.  I am very much hoping they will perform it a second time, so I can see it, and anyone else who will not have had the chance this time.

I was not involved because firstly I cannot sing, but I also did not have the time free to put into costume making or any of the other behind the scenes work.  They have been doing this at least two nights a week for several months.  I am so proud of them, because apart from practice time, it involved for some of us, at least an hour’s travel going and another coming back, on a winter night.  And yet I see the joy and sense of accomplishment in their faces.  I so much pray every success for them.

My own plans are to work hard enough that I have my novella for next Christmas completed by January 8^th, 2005 – and I have planned it, but not written the first word yet.  It is December 9^th!  I will try to start it in the airport – in half an hour!  That allows four weeks!  I should manage it.

Then I shall plunge into World War One again, and think, plan and dream about the next big idea for after that.  Something entirely and completely different!

Continued at the hotel in Courmayeur.  It is a gloriously sunny morning in the Italian Alps, snow glittering on the mountains which are very steep, great peaks rising sheer into the sky.  I believe it is one of the top skiing resorts.  There is snow in the narrow, cobbled streets a little as well, but the air is still and not too cold, although the outdoor swimming pool has ice on it.  I think I have press interviews all day, and dinner with my new Italian publisher this evening (which went on until midnight!)

So far everyone I have met has been both charming and interesting.  That is one of the best things about travelling.  On the plane from Glasgow to London I sat beside someone who did not speak at all, but from London to Turin it was an Irishman from Dublin, and we talked about all manner of things.  It reminded me a little of the Irishman I sat next to on a flight from London to Frankfurt a while ago.  He too was intelligent and full of wisdom and observation, end that individual wit that the Irish so often have.  It made the journey such a pleasure.

Dinner here in Italy starts about 8.30 in the evening, and finishes around midnight.  Again, full of conversation!  That is surely one of life’s richest pleasures, to speak openly and in exploration and friendship with people you have never met before, whose homes and lives are different from your own, and yet who have an equally keen love and care for the issues of thought, creativity and good and evil, and a hunger to learn and to share.

This is a lovely hotel and I have spent all day being interviewed by many different people.  It is surprising how they all find questions that are unique and approach the same book from their own points of view.  It is exciting and stimulating to be made to think in so many different ways and try to answer honestly, both for them and for yourself.  It makes me consider how valuable it is to be questioned in many things.

If someone asks me why I write of certain subjects, or what is most important to me that I say, what values I wish to put across, then suddenly I need to concentrate on priorities.  Of all the things I value, what comes first?  Is it that my words should say the same thing as my actions say?  If not, how do they differ?  Is there a greater vision than I can yet achieve, which would be honest?  Or is it an evasion, a tempering of effort according to cost, which would not?

And when people pass a compliment, am I living up to it, can I deserve it, at least some of the time?  When I sense that it is honestly given, I want to be worthy of it, and I will stretch every ability I have to be what they have said of me.

And then I realize that that can translate to my treatment of others as well.  If I express the best that I see in others, perhaps I will feed their hunger to aspire.  If I don’t, then am I starving that need?  I think so.  The desire to live up to the hope and the faith of those who believe in us is very strong.

A few days ago I was drawn to the fact that our Heavenly Father has set such a high and marvellous task for us, He must have a sublime faith in our possibilities.  Have we as much faith in Him?  I know very well that I do not always have.  There are high times and low ones, and a vast stretch between.  Some of this seems to be beyond my ability to govern yet, but some is a pattern I allow myself to fall into.  Thoughts both good and bad can be indulged, and end in controlling us.  If I exercised my will more, I could gain mastery at least of some.  Say anything often enough, and it will become a habit.

“I am a daughter of God.  He will ask of me nothing that it is impossible for me to do.  He knows me better than I know myself, both the struggles and the weaknesses.  He wishes me to succeed.  There are no traps, no games, no lies.  He will do all He can to help me, but if He carries me then I do not learn to walk, or to carry myself, and from time to time to help others – and that is what my life is for – for me to learn.”

Why do I remember that only sometimes?  I never forget that if I put my hand onto the hot stove it will burn, and it will hurt badly, and take a long time to heal.  Perhaps it will never be completely better, not if it is really bad.  I know this.

Sometimes I think I know God is there, and at least something of what He is like.  At other times I only BELIEVE it – and there are too many times when I forget.  If I didn’t I would never be afraid, or doubt my ability to do whatever is required of me.  I would know that pain may be fierce, but it is temporary.  Loss may hurt, but it too is only for a space.  Sin, error, ugliness may be repented of, and there is a way back, however rough or steep, however expensive in other ways.  If I am willing.  Do I want it all enough?  That is really the question.  Do I hunger for the future enough to pay for it with some of the present?  Or does the clamour of ‘now’ drown out the music of the future?

I think that depends on what I am listening to.

And ‘now’ is the only time in which we live, it is the moment whose beauty we can love and give thanks for, whose opportunities we can take – or waste.

And here today in the Italian mountains with brilliant blue sky, dazzling snow higher up, there is so much to enjoy.  In a little while I shall have an interview, then we shall all (the other writers, publishers, agents, etc.) go up Mont Blanc (the highest peak in Europe) in the funicular, and have lunch.  We will talk about all sorts of ideas – stories, beliefs, hopes, fears, political expectations and dreams, thoughts of good and evil, places we have found marvellous, people who have said and done great things.  We will laugh, eat good food, some will drink wine, look at a view to take your breath away.

It did!  The peak towered just above us, looking close enough to climb easily!  We sat in the sun and it was really quite hot!  We ate bruschetta and other tasty things, and everyone else drank champagne.  I lifted mine for the toast, then put it aside quietly and I don’t think anyone else noticed.  It was all such good fellowship it was a total pleasure.

This evening my publisher will launch my new book.  If the evening is anything like the other nights we have been here, we will go together through the dark streets, cobbled, picturesque, of this town under the mountain, and all dine together – until midnight.

Tomorrow I shall be driven back to Turin and the airport to fly to London, then Glasgow, then drive the four or five hours home.

The drive back from Courmayeur to Turin to the airport was amazing.  I have seen other beautiful places, but none more than this.  It is utterly cloudless, the very air shimmers with a brilliance of light.  The snow on the peaks dazzles the eye as far as I can see.  The Alps stretch right from here on the French-Italian-Swiss borders, all the way to the Mediterranean, like an endless row of sharp and glittering dragon teeth against the cobalt of the sky.

The lower slopes are covered with bare trees in soft greys and golds and bronzes, the bare hills have touches of ochre and red.  The villages seem to be part of the land, and every so often there are ancient castles, as if the rock had formed them itself as crowns to the promontories or the finishing touch to a natural tower sprung from the steep hills.  The rivers have ice floating in them, and stretches where the water is deep enough to be blue-green.

My driver tells me that Napoleon Bonaparte passed this way when he came to conquer Italy.  One castle was so close to his path that he had his soldiers lay grass on the track to muffle the horses’ hooves, and of course came at night.

There is a gold on the hills, a softness in the air as if it were an old painting, a vision seen through silk.  And yet the sun is so bright you smile just to look at it and your heart lifts.

If this is earth, what could heaven possibly be like?  Perhaps it’s not different to the eye so much as to the heart?  Loved with a wilder, cleaner passion, more filled with the knowledge of Who created it?

It is wonderful to travel, but above all it is food for the mind and the heart to meet new people and find them so very interesting, intelligent and kind, for however long or short a time we may know each other.

Perhaps eternity is like this?  Paths crossing and re-crossing, friendships remembered and picked up again, work to do that we care about passionately, only the anxieties taken away, the occasional loneliness gone forever, and certainty where now there is only faith and hope.

But always there must be honour and courage, and above all love in its fullness, given with joy.

Christmas is the beginning in heaven and earth of the possibility of all these things.  Rejoice in it for all the earth.  And may the new year bring you the brightness and the hope that lie in all beginnings.