Author Archives: Ninette Hartley

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About Ninette Hartley

Author: First publication Dear Tosh a memoir

💯100 Days of Writing

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I have committed to the 💯100 days of writing through the London Writers’ Salon. They’re a great organisation which, I believe, was set up during Covid. They wanted to encourage people to write from their homes, so they set up Writers’ Hour, which is online and happens four times a day in different Time Zone. It’s 50 minutes of silent writing in the company of other writers. I attend the London hour which for me (because I’m in France) is from 9am until 10am. Other times during the day are organised around 8am in other countries e.g. New York, Los Angeles, New Zealand and I believe a couple of other times have been added recently.

Me During the 100 days of Writing

I attended a workshop the day before the 💯100 days of writing began so that we could all brainstorm which project we would work on during the time. For me, I decided to try and finish a novel set during WW1 that I began in 2014 (over twelve years ago!). I feel I owe it to the characters I have created to get them off my computer and into a book. They’ve waited long enough and it’s time I took them all through the rest of their stories. Might have to kill a few off though 🤔

The important thing about signing up for the 💯100 days (which will take until 31st December 2026) is really that it has got me right back into the habit of writing every day for at least an hour. I have so many other commitments; painting, pottery, pantomime — oh yes, it’s that time of year again — that sometimes it’s difficult to fit in an hour at my computer but it’s not impossible. I just have to get organised in the right way.

However, what I have to own up to here is that my original project (the novel) was cast aside before I even began the 💯100 days, because I realised that a far more pressing assignment was to get my Italian memoir, Life in the Boot finally wrapped up and published before Christmas. Hence, I am working on that first and as soon as it’s done then I will commit to finishing the novel, working title, Frieden — Whoops — now I’ve let that out of the bag I’ll have to get on with it as soon as I can. If all goes to plan, Life in the Boot will be off my computer by the 24th December so I will still have a week left of the 💯100 days, but of course Christmas will fall in that week. Nothing to stop me writing through the holiday season though…I mean it’s only an hour a day and more if I can manage it.

How I hope I’ll look on the 31st January 2026

Thanks for reading…Back soon!

Peter May: December 20th 1951 – 25th September 2026

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Photograph Taken from Facebook

Last week, on the 25th September the author Peter May died at his home here in France. His wife Janice announced his passing and there have been a deluge of tributes online and in newspapers, writing publications and other media outlets from everywhere.

I am a member of the Society of Authors and in April 2024 I took over as host on Zoom for the monthly meeting for the French Group. It’s called a local group but it is actually the whole of France. In November 2024 Peter joined our meeting on Zoom for the first time – at least the first time since I’d been hosting. He immediately became a regular and a firm favourite with all the other attendees.

Although I never met him in person, it soon seemed as though I’d known him for years and that he had become a friend. I think we all felt like that. He was a genuinely lovely man. Even though he was obviously the most successful and famous writer in our group he had no side to him. He shared invaluable insights into his writing process, always giving solid and helpful advice without ever sounding as though he knew more than we did — which he surely did. In May of 2025 he gave a wonderful author talk for us at our monthly meeting. He had an easy-going eloquence and we all hung on every word. I believe we ran a little over time because everyone had questions for him which of course he was more than happy to answer.

On Wednesday the 23rd September 2026 he attended our Zoom meeting and was his usual cheerful, talkative, informative self. When I saw that he had died only a couple of days later, I could not believe it. The world has lost a truly lovely person and I know that he will be very much missed by everyone who knew him, not least his Zoom friends at the local SOA meetings.

If you would like to read more about Peter, here are a couple of links:

PETER MAY WEBSITE
BBC
PETER MAY
PETER MAY WIKIPEDIA

I Have Left Substack

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I hummed and hawed for a while about Substack. I really wanted to use it but since I began, the site has changed and I have found more recently that I am bombarded with emails re posts and often from people I do and do not follow so I just decided to give it up.

Here, on my website in the blog section I can post what I want and people can read them without having to sign up. You can follow of course, which would be lovely, but you are not obliged to do so. As I understand it, you can read one or all of them without having to pay.

So my first post here, after many months, is a short one just to let you know what I’m doing. Hopefully another post will follow soon and it will be full of interesting and newsy things to brighten your day in this rather strange world we are living in at the moment.

I’m aiming to publish my memoir, ‘Life in the Boot’ about living in Italy, before the end of the year or at the very latest in January 2027. Just need to get all my ducks in a row and boom. . .

A Week in the Lot

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The Pottery at Mas Sarrat

At the beginning of May I spent a whole week on a pottery course at Le Mas Sarrat, Lherm, in The Lot. It’s about a 3 hour drive from where I live in the South of France. I set off on the Sunday afternoon and arrived in good time to settle in to my little apartment and then join everyone, both those running the course and those attending as students, for a wonderful barbecue.

My little apartment
The Gang (credit Jennie Gilbert)
My Breakfast!

We were to have two tutors, Jennie Gilbert and Emily Myers you can read more about them if you click on the links. They are both very talented potters with different styles and I felt honoured that these two experts were happy to share so much knowledge with us.

Jennie Gilbert
Emily Myers

There were 7 of us on the course and we came from all over the world. A woman from Canada was attending with her best friend from England and another women from Australia was there with her best friend also from England. What a wonderful way to meet up and catch up from across the globe. Not sure how they managed to get their pottery back home though.

The course ran for 4 days — we had Wednesday to ourselves. We could work in the pottery on our own if we wanted to but I chose to go into Cahors and have a look around. Probably should have stayed back as a couple of weeks later I got a speeding ticket from Espère which was a small town I had driven through on my way to Cahors!

CAHORS

The Market
A street
The indoor market
Always plenty of pastries in France
Pont Valentré

I had booked for bed and breakfast and we were given lunch each day as part of the course. The set-up at Le Mas Sarrat is wonderful. It’s a great place for a family holiday. Fiona runs the gites and the B&B and she is Jennie Gilbert’s sister. Fiona has lived in France for a long time and apart from being the most amazing cook speaks French fluently. I believe she also runs French immersion courses. But it is her sister Jennie who is the potter and she comes to Le Mas Sarrat a few times a year. Jennie also teaches in England and you can see that on her website HERE.

Below is just a very small sample of the food that we were served by the lovely Fiona. I am gluten and lactose intolerant and Fiona went out of her way to deliver the most delicious meals for me. We had home made soup each day and there was always the call of, ‘This one is for Ninette!’ How kind she was.

Home made Crumble with home grown plums
A wonderful salad
The 11am cakes didn’t last long!

There are quite a few stages to making a pot, bowl or any item in pottery. You can handbuild with coils, slabs or pinching or you can throw on the wheel. The latter is the hardest thing to master, in my opinion of course. First you have to centre the pot on the wheel and if you can’t get on with that then the rest of the process is impossible. I enjoy all aspects of the make. I found I was quite good at ‘pulling’ handles but I’ve not tried again since the course and in my limited experience with clay, I reckon next time I won’t be able to do it at all! After the creation you then have to decorate with underglazes, glazes, oxides…there’s no end to what you can do. It was absolutely amazing how much all of us created in just four days.

Raw mugs drying
Decorated but not fired (glaze is brown)
Fired (glaze is blue)
starting the coil pot (credit Jennie Gilbert)
nearly there
shaped and scraped
Before firing
Finished
the little bird begins…
waiting to be fired
cooked and looking good

Me looking as pleased as punch with my creations. Not perfect but not bad for a beginner!

I cannot recommend Jennie and Emily highly enough. If you’re a beginner at this pottery lark then I suggest you sign up for a two-day or four-day course. You will learn so much and in such good company. I’m going back in October for two days and I cannot wait to get there. In the meantime, I’m putting into practice all that I learnt – at least I’m trying to!

At the end of the week, I wrote a little poem. There’s a lot of water involved in pottery, especially on the wheel.

My Creative Journey is Changing

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For a year or so, I’ve been posting on Substack, but recently I feel it’s changing and becoming more like Facebook, with so many people posting notes. I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake to hand myself over to that platform instead of staying here, on my blog, with my faithful followers.

Here, you’re not asked to pay for anything or sign up to anyone else’s content — there’s a little less pressure, I think. Besides, as the title of this blog suggests, my creative journey is evolving. I’m still writing, but these days it’s mostly poetry, and my other great love now is pottery. Poetry and pottery roll off the tongue rather well, don’t you think? In fact, so much so that I often find myself saying one when I mean the other!

I also love to paint, and watercolour is my favourite medium. I do try with acrylics, but I’m not sure it’s really for me. I’ve also discovered a fondness for drawing. In fact, I think I’ve tried almost everything there is to try in art — pastels, watercolour pencils — and this week I’m having a go at collage painting. Who knows how that will turn out!

I’m inspired by the people I meet at the art and pottery sessions I attend. We’re a mixed bunch in experience, artistic style, and background — a wonderfully diverse community united by a shared love of art in all its forms. I find the sessions therapeutic, relaxing, and socially enjoyable. I also have to speak French quite a bit, which is good practice for me.

That said, I sometimes find I work better at home, alone, where I can give myself fully to the creative process without worrying about the brief, whether I’m doing it ‘right’, or what others might think. At home, I can simply let go and create.

Art, like all creative pursuits, is subjective. You can learn the techniques and understand your medium, your colours, your style — but eventually, perhaps after many years, you begin to create for yourself. Not everyone will like what you produce, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s just like writing: you have to learn not to ‘compare and despair’. So the fact that my pottery mouse apparently looks like a toffee apple with ears (according to one of my sons) is clearly subjective — and what does he know anyway? In my defence it was one of the very first things I made.

Perhaps he did look a little better before I painted him. . . 🤔

Below is probably my best piece so far. Hand built and painted.

I had a little taster of throwing on the wheel when I was back in England in September 2025 and I made this pot:

The little knob on the top is a stone we found on a driveway, we picked it up (with permission) and then glued it to the lid. I loved using the wheel so much that I’ve now found somewhere local to experiment and learn more about it and hopefully get better.

It’s not really possible for me to create pottery at home as there is nowhere for me to make a mess — and pottery is very messy — I’m working on it though. . . at least I’m working on The Man to do something about it. 😊😊

More on that subject later . . .