And so we have reached the end of another year. Highlights
from the past twelve months are being compiled everywhere you look and there is
a sense of expectation for what we hope will occur in the next twelve months.
It is now almost three years since I made my first faltering
remarks on this blog and after nearly one-hundred-and-fifty Sundays I’m
starting to wonder if this might be the beginning of the end. Perhaps I ought instead
to consider this a sabbatical of sorts. Daft as it sounds I cannot quite imagine
not writing on here, it has become such a regular fixture of my week.
This blog has been a personal success and admittedly also a
selfish experience. Crafting these bits and pieces of stories has given me a
great deal of pleasure, but has probably been less of a delight for the
unfortunate souls who may have stumbled accidentally upon my haphazard
creations.
Over the past three years I have written more consistently
than I had in any of the years previously. Now, however, I feel like attempting the next challenge – writing that novella. I did not consider when I set myself
this goal back in November that ending my blog might be a consequence.
After some thought, however, I came to realise that the
quality of any writing I would produce in the next twelve months would probably
deteriorate. I don’t know if I have any readers, or if I’m only talking to
myself, but still I don’t want to waste anyone’s time by posting rubbish week
on week.
For the next twelve months, therefore, I shall be working at
that novella. Hopefully this year’s resolution will be as much fun to complete
as the one I made here three years ago. If you have, at any point, taken the
trouble to read my meagre scribbles then you deserve a hearty thank you. If I did
bribe you with cake to read this blog, then I shall probably be providing
similar edible incentives to read draft chapters in the coming year.
But, for now at least, I shall bid you adieu.
Sunday, 29 December 2013
Sunday, 22 December 2013
Christmas In Camelot
|
| British Library, Cotton MS Nero A.x, article 3, ff. 94v95. |
Christmas time. The king is home at Camelot
Among his many lords, all splendid men –
All the trusted brothers of the Round Table.
Ready for court revels and carefree pleasures.
Knights in great numbers at the tournament sports
Jousted with much joy, as gentle knights
Will do, then rode to the court for the carol-dances.
The festival lasted fifteen long days
Of great mirth with all the meat that they could manage.
Such clamour and merriment were amazing to hear:
By day a joyful noise, dancing at night –
A happiness that rang through rooms and halls
With lords and ladies pleasing themselves as they pleased.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lines
37-49.
Sunday, 15 December 2013
Empty Chairs And Empty Tables...
Yet again finding inspiration
on my regular walks – a house that was once crammed full of personal items is
now sadly deserted, with only the for sale board planted like a conquering flag
in the front garden.
As I walked into the house of my long-ago childhood it felt for a moment as if the fabric of the building had been shifted. It seemed to me that the rooms had moved, the corridors changed, as if the house was a giant Rubik’s Cube that someone had been playing with, before puzzled and defeated they had set it back down completely altered. Even as I searched through the memories of this place, coloured sepia by the photographs that captured them, I could not quite fix in my head how the rooms ought to have been.
I went through the first door I came to on my left. There was no reason to choose that door. There was no moment of sudden insight and clarity. It, like all the others, was a blank canvas to me. The peeling, yellowed-paint was merely a sad testament to the passage of time. The catch had not been fully clicked into place and the door opened almost eagerly with only the slightest touch.
The room was long though not especially wide and at the far end there was a pair of large glass doors. They looked like a trick of the eye, an illusion to make the room appear longer. The neat rectangle of grass outside became the natural extension of the neat rectangular room. The room was entirely empty perhaps explaining why my first impression was purely of rectangular proportion. There was no furniture to claim the empty walls and floors as their own. There were none of the trinkets, pictures or ornaments that I know had once covered every available surface. Their remembered presence, and their absence now, only emphasised the complete emptiness of the room.
Did I play on this floor at the feet of grown-ups? I cannot remember this room specifically, but the house had always seemed to me like a museum; a grand collection of memories and tokens. Time, like a thief, had stolen those memories and the items these rooms used to contain. Perhaps I am the only one left who can feel that loss and emptiness. An empty chair is only an empty chair if you have the expectation that someone should be sitting there and discover that they are not.
A stray beam of sunlight filtered through the smeared windows of the room. For that moment the room was brilliant gold, the air filled with shimmering glitter and something of the past seemed to return. The light mellowed and faded, however, as the clouds continued to pass in the outside world. The house returned to its faded glory, the dust hanging heavy and the rooms remaining empty.
As I walked into the house of my long-ago childhood it felt for a moment as if the fabric of the building had been shifted. It seemed to me that the rooms had moved, the corridors changed, as if the house was a giant Rubik’s Cube that someone had been playing with, before puzzled and defeated they had set it back down completely altered. Even as I searched through the memories of this place, coloured sepia by the photographs that captured them, I could not quite fix in my head how the rooms ought to have been.
I went through the first door I came to on my left. There was no reason to choose that door. There was no moment of sudden insight and clarity. It, like all the others, was a blank canvas to me. The peeling, yellowed-paint was merely a sad testament to the passage of time. The catch had not been fully clicked into place and the door opened almost eagerly with only the slightest touch.
The room was long though not especially wide and at the far end there was a pair of large glass doors. They looked like a trick of the eye, an illusion to make the room appear longer. The neat rectangle of grass outside became the natural extension of the neat rectangular room. The room was entirely empty perhaps explaining why my first impression was purely of rectangular proportion. There was no furniture to claim the empty walls and floors as their own. There were none of the trinkets, pictures or ornaments that I know had once covered every available surface. Their remembered presence, and their absence now, only emphasised the complete emptiness of the room.
Did I play on this floor at the feet of grown-ups? I cannot remember this room specifically, but the house had always seemed to me like a museum; a grand collection of memories and tokens. Time, like a thief, had stolen those memories and the items these rooms used to contain. Perhaps I am the only one left who can feel that loss and emptiness. An empty chair is only an empty chair if you have the expectation that someone should be sitting there and discover that they are not.
A stray beam of sunlight filtered through the smeared windows of the room. For that moment the room was brilliant gold, the air filled with shimmering glitter and something of the past seemed to return. The light mellowed and faded, however, as the clouds continued to pass in the outside world. The house returned to its faded glory, the dust hanging heavy and the rooms remaining empty.
Sunday, 8 December 2013
I-Patch
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed in recent months
the ‘patch count’ that has been slowly increasing in the side bar. Back in
April, with the prospect of several long train journeys to endure, I decided to
start making a patchwork blanket. (Wool, I reasoned, was much lighter to carry
than books).
Having reached the goal of fifty knitted rectangles I then stitched them together and attached a psychedelic array of tassels to create a warm and colourful blanket. The question of course now remains: what will I do on all those long train journeys in the future?
Having reached the goal of fifty knitted rectangles I then stitched them together and attached a psychedelic array of tassels to create a warm and colourful blanket. The question of course now remains: what will I do on all those long train journeys in the future?
Sunday, 1 December 2013
Time For A Snack?
A bit of bloodthirsty cannibalism and a tree-eating horse...
 |
| Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, Annal for 1243. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Ms 16, (f. 166r). |