Month: Apr 2020

Treasure Trove

On Thursday, after writing my blog post, I decided I wanted a feature image of a bard declaiming to a hall full of Anglo Saxons – as you do. Didn’t have to be too authentic (given that there was very little representational art at that time), what I had in mind was a 19th century illustration of some mock-gothic Walter Scott fantasy of the Dark Ages. But Googling didn’t help much, throwing up mostly images from 21st fantasy fiction and re-enactors, mostly mediaeval in style, which was not at all what I had in mind.

What I stumbled across, however, was a fabulous treasure trove of images which held me fascinated (and delayed my breakfast) for a couple of hours or more: the British Library Flickr page of copyright-free images, mostly black and white, page after page of illustrations from (probably justly) forgotten novels and travelogues, landscapes, people, advertisements, cartoons, engravings, illuminated letters, botanical drawings, maps, snippets of graphic design, architectural plans, odd bits of text, signatures, portraits, and on and on, all scanned from books and documents in the BL collection.

I can’t begin to describe the joy I get from scrolling through these pages – so far I’ve only sampled the first twenty of over ten thousand, so that should keep me happy for a while. It’s a wonderful galimaufrey (ooh, I don’t often get a chance to use that word – in fact I’m not sure I ever have before!), a completely random grab-bag of stuff. Forget trying to use the search function, that searches the whole of Flickr (unless there’s some clever subtle way of narrowing it that I haven’t found yet), and in my case threw up the above-mentioned re-enactors, plus quite a few involving lego figures. But the randomness of it all, the serendipity, the joyous juxtapositions are part of the fun.

I always say I’m not a visual person, but I’m quite happy wandering through this electronic gallery – more so than many real world ones that I’ve visited, where I tend to get bored quite easily. I feel as though I’ve made a wonderful discovery, found a place that I can keep going back to without having to leave the house, and who knows? Maybe one day I’ll come across some unanticipated inspiration that will start me writing again.

Fantastic_Futures_2025-243

What will signal the end?

We obey

We don’t go out

We keep at least two metres away from anyone, everyone

We wear throw-away rubber gloves

We wash our hands

We disinfect the front door handle

When can we stop?

Do we have to catch the disease and recover before we are allowed out?

What Do You Think?

What do I think?

I can write about that ‘cos I know, I thought it. It was in my head, My brain and I can remember thinking it.

But is it honest to include such opinions and sometimes firm statements describing someone else’s thoughts? Can anyone ever know?

I was reading a short story in which the main character was in a shop buying a dress. There had been a few, brief, conversational exchanges in the shop, but she went on to explain how, after leaving, she had concluded that the proprietress was having an ongoing argument with herself about what to do about the slowly diminishing sales of the goods she dealt in, whether to sell up and move on, change the product for cheaper stuff or just carry on and hope.

How did she know that? The narrator I mean. How did she know what the lady thought? Unless she told her, the proprietress (if that’s a word) (which it is ‘cos I’ve just looked it up) had told the narrator I mean, and that hadn’t been mentioned thus far into the story.

Can I write what’s in your head?

I intensely dislike drivers exceeding speed limits and people dropping litter.

And there’s nothing effective that I can do about either of those things.

Maybe I should write a story .

Choice

I don’t have to write, but I do.

I like receiving compliments for what I write and I like it when I like what I write.

I enjoy (love?) telling stories. I used to make up bedtime stories for our children when they were ‘bedtime story old’. I do it for our grandchildren when they come to stay.

I would love to be hugely successful, sell millions of books. I have a couple of ideas in my head which might achieve that – if I ever get around to writing them. I procrastinate. And, typically male, seek instant gratification.

But this is for you. Do what you want to do.

NaPoWriMo

April is NaPoWriMo, short for National Poetry Writing Month – though these days, like NaNoWriMo, it’s an international event.

It was started in 2003 by American poet Maureen Thorson, who decided to write a poem a day and post them on her blog. Since then, poets from all over the world have taken up the challenge, and poems spring up every April faster than daffodils in Wordsworth’s garden at Grasmere.

To find out more, you can visit the NaPoWriMo website. But to join in, all you need to do is write a poem and post it somewhere – on a blog, on Facebook, wherever the fancy takes you.

Share it with the world, get out there, and support your fellow poets by reading their contributions.

You can read my contribution here.