Milford 2009

[jacey]

Milford is an annual, week-long event at which published SF writers get together to workshop and crit short stories, novel beginnings, ongoing work and ideas with each other. It's been held all over the UK, but currently resides in North Wales, at Trigonos, within sight of Mount Snowdon and close to Caernarfon. This year it took place during the last week in October, an unusually mild week for the time of year with Snowdonia decked out in autumn colours.

The maximum number of writers rarely exceeds 14 or 15, but this year, due to a few late dropouts, we ended up being a small but select group of 10. We workshopped 19 pieces of writing between us, something approaching 150,000 words. The standard was enormously high. That's not to say that we didn't have criticisms, but they were all constructive.

I can't say just how much I appreciate Milford as a concept. It's brilliant. There are no face to face crit groups in my area run along serious lines (one in Huddersfield where people read out their own work - my idea of hell) so to spend a week in the company of like-minded SF writers recharges my writing batteries like nothing else can. I get as much out of doing the crits as being critted and once a piece has been through the mill it resurfaces in conversation - sometimes with great ideas bubbling to the surface.

Here are the 2009 Milfordians: Back row L - R lil_shepherd, Nick Moulton, mevennen,  birdsedge (me), Heather Lindsley, altariel, Jon Moran
 Front Row: chrisbutler, Stefan Hogberg, charlieallery



Trigonos is a fabulous place, on the southern edge of Snowdonia with its own lake and a glorious view from our crit room window.



If I have any reservation's about Trigonos it's about food - its (mostly) vegetarian fare which shows up more obviously in their evening meals. The food ethos is great in that it's all organic and much of it is home grown. Breakfasts are fine, lunches are brilliant with a huge pot of home made soup and a variety of breads and salads, but evening meals can be a little lentiltastic and... the smoked mackerel and mushroom pie did cause a few grown men to cry. (Not a happy food combination. If you ever fancy trying it... don't.) When served polenta one evening (following on from quinoa the evening before) someone (and it wasn't me this time) was heard to remark, 'This isn't food; this is what food eats!' Don't get me wrong, I like a fair amount of vegetarian food, even though I don't actually like vegetables in large quantities, but courgettes in runny cheese as a main course doesn't do it for me, and neither does sweet potato Thai curry which looks like orange slush. In all fairness the chef does make an alternative for people with allergies and extreme dislikes, but if there's a glut in the garden you will find the week's menu heavy with it. This year they obviously had millions of courgettes. I would never have actually listed courgettes on my 'dislike' list because usually I eat a few just to be polite, but now I find that after a week of aversion therapy, I can't face them. We didn't even get them in ratatouille (which I do like), instead they were mostly served in hero-sized lumps, boiled or steamed or maybe very lightly oven roasted. maeve_the_red is probably licking her lips right now - committed veggie that she is.

On the other hand everything else about the place is so right. The people are friendly and welcoming, we get our own ensuite rooms, the facilities for meeting and for socialising are marvellous, the setting is perfect. So all in all I can cope with the food given all the other plus points. Maybe next year we'll just ask the chef to tweak the menu a little more in the direction of us omnivores.

We always try to get all the workshopping work finished by Thursday night so that we can go and have a day out on Friday. This year with the weather still fine and mild we picked Caernarfon Castle - a fabulous place to spend a few hours and the guided tour was well worth two quid even though the guide did think the Angevin Kings were English (rather than French)







Despite my gripes about the food I wouldn't want to miss Milford and I'm really looking forward to next year - September 18th - 25th. If anyone fancies coming you only need to have sold one piece of fiction to qualify. You can find out more from www.milfordsf.co.uk

Comments

[julesjones]

One of these years I'll have a car again, and thus access to Food I Can Eat, and I'll go to Milford...

(For those wondering why -- supertaster who needs a low fibre diet, this not being a good combination with a vegetarian diet.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

In all fairness if you gave the chef a list of the things you needed to eat he would cater just for you. He's very good about that. After the lentiltastic week a few years ago I specify no peppers, no pulses diet - though I did wish I'd also specified no vegetables this year.
:-)
And there are enough of us with cars to take you into the nearest village (about three miles) or Caernarfon (about 8 miles) to stock up on what you need.

[julesjones]

It's not just the lentiltastic problem. It's a lot more difficult than non-supertasters realise to deal with a week-long diet of food cooked by someone who is vegetarian-orientated, because the standard reaction of vegetarians to omnivores complaining about vegetarian food is "but of course it's tasty, you're just not putting enough garlic/chili/etc in it!" (Although I was always counted as a vegetarian for pizza-ordering purposes in our social group in California, because the vegetarian pizzas were the ones that were *not* far too heavily spiced for me.)

kalypso_v is an absolute saint for having me as a house guest for a couple of months when I first moved back to the UK. We managed the protein problem perfectly well because I am as big a cheese fetishist as she is, and she has no objection to meat coming into her house as long as she doesn't have to deal with it. But dealing with the Bland was really only possible because we have not one but two excellent delis in the village, and did not feel the need to eat identical meals. :-)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

So what's the basic idea behind what you can and can't eat? I've fed people on wheat-free-meat-free-dairy-free diets before (one of my friends being all three combined) but not heard of yours.What do you (mainly) eat and what must you avoid?

[julesjones]

There are two separate things going on.

One is that I have the form of irritable bowel syndrome that needs a low fibre diet -- wheat bran is a particular problem, to the point where three or four slices of wholewheat bread could mean refusing to go further than 50 yards from a toilet the next day, but a week-long diet of whole grains in general would leave me feeling pretty poorly. Soy mince is also a major trigger, although I've been told that soy mince typically has wheat bran in for texture, which may be what's doing it.

Individual low-fibre veggie meals are fine, but it's likely to be tricky to find something edible every time on a menu heavily slanted towards wholefoods -- particularly as the lactose intolerance part of the IBS will also kick in once my gut has been upset by fibre.

The other issue is that I'm a supertaster. This means that my sense of taste is both more sensitive and oddly skewed from the perspective of a standard or non-taster. For example, chili *hurts* me at a level where standard tasters can't even taste it. Bitterness is both extremely obvious and extremely unpleasant, so that until I found out about supertasting I couldn't understand why anyone would want to eat marmalade -- it tastes utterly vile to me. It's also why I'm teetotal, and why I don't drink orange juice that isn't either heavily pasteurised or very freshly squeezed.

Both of these are normally easy to work around, although I was less than enamoured with the Indian restaurant that used curry-flavoured flour to batter its English fish and chips with. But a kitchen heavily slanted towards both wholefoods and towards vegetarian is highly likely to hit one or the other on all dishes several times over the course of a week, even when trying to cater for meat-eaters.

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

Oh, your pics have made me all nostalgic - I must have been about 15 years old when I went to Caernarfon with my parents.

I'm glad you enjoyed Milford. Next time you'll have to smuggle in a steak and beg use of the kitchens....

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Oh, hooray, that fantastical wall tapestry is still there, looming.

Oh, that was a bad pun.

And the view is still the same!

I will revel in the pictures now, and do a jealousy meditation later.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

*waves*

I wonder if any one of us is going to post without mentioning the fish pie!

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

The fish pie did loom rather large, didn't it?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have eaten it anyway, but the carbs and veggies weren't anything to write home about either! And the date pudding suffered from a lack of dates...

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Some year, I will get past my long-standing writer's block and shoulder pain and come to Milford. I'd swear it's the best incentive to write that I have.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

IOt's a great week. Don't let the fish pie put you off.

[maeve-the-red.livejournal.com]

So you didn't sneak off to Beddgelert for a porkgasmic bacon roll then?

Looks like I'll miss next year too: according to Amazon (the usual method of finding these things out) 'Guardians of Paradise' is out on September 16th, so that month will be tied up with book stuff.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

We went into Caernarfon for lunch on Frioday (after the castle) and I had a Welsh black beef dandwich with gravy and chips. It was indescribably delicious.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

As ususal the lunches were delicious - it was only the evening meals that were problematical. If there's been a handy food pub just up the road some of us would probably have bolted for it more than once. Unfortunately the porkgasm cafe isn't open in the evening as far as I know.