Looking for something to suit my mood.
I’ve been reading the headlines and it seems that nothing else is going on except Trump, so a plane crash, and residual fallout from the explosion in Beirut, if there was one, would be good.
All bad news unfortunately, so I need to find something uplifting.
There’s nothing like a walk in the park on a bright sunny day.
Is there?
What could possible happen?
Category: blogging
Writing a book in 365 days – 10
Day 10
Apparently, we are still discussing the implements with which we choose to put words on paper, and it seems that choice of implement might make a difference.
I have a degree of scepticism because I generally get words down on my phone, the only implement that is nearby at all times., no matter where I am.
Of course, many years ago I always travelled with little pocket-sized notebooks and a pen, rather than a pencil, to write. I still have all of these, several hundred in fact, in several shoeboxes in the cupboard in my writing room.
Over the years I have accumulated many A5-sized notebooks I bought where there were stationery sales, and now use these to both make notes or write. I tend not to use the smaller notebooks now, but I have a hundred or so sitting in a drawer just in case.
But do you like to write using a biro, with smudgy ink, a pen with a rollerball tip with less smudge, a felt-tip pen, which, depending on the paper type, can leach through, making it difficult to write on both sides, a fountain pen with ink, the old-fashioned way of writing letters, and some of the older writers back in the day?
I remember my early days in school, grade three in fact, when we switched from pencil to pen and ink. It was very messy, to begin with, but I remember vividly being the ink monitor, the one who filled the ink wells, and discovering my schoolmate’s prelidiction for stuffing bits of blotting paper into the well for whatever reason.
Even now it would be a messy way to write.
But the choice is yours.
Tomorrow, at last, we get to do some more writing.
Searching for Locations: Waitomo caves house, North Island, New Zealand
A relatively unassuming lane leads to what could be described as a grand hotel, called Waitomo Caves Hotel.
The original hotel was built in 1908, and it was later extended in 1928. Part of it is ‘Victorian’, based on an eastern Europe mountain chalet, and part of it is ‘Art Deco’, the concrete wing, and a feature, if it could be called that, is none of the four corners are the same.
Views from the balcony show part of the surrounding gardens
and the town of Waitomo in the distance.
In gloomy weather, it does look rather spooky, and I suspect there may be a ghost or two lurking somewhere in the buildings.
But…
This a a very interesting, and the words of one of my younger grand daughters, a very creepy place. It would make an excellent base for paranormal activity, and there could very well be ghosts walking the corridors of this hotel.
It has the long darkish passageways that lead in all directions and to almost hidden rooms, a creepy nighttime aspect, and the creaky woodwork.
I know when we were exploring, it was easy to lose your bearings, if not get lost, trying to find certain places, and once found, hard to find your way back.
All in all, it was one of the best stays in a very old place going through the throes of modernisation.
And looking at it from the outside at night, I’ll leave you with that thought…
I’ve got words on paper, but
They’re not exactly Nobel prize-winning prose.
Well, not yet.
I guess the point is that I have at least crystallised my thoughts on paper so that I can do something with them. After all, anything is better than nothing, isn’t it?
Sometimes I wonder. I look back on a lot of the stuff I wrote forty or fifty years ago and it looks bad. The thing is, then, I thought it was great, and that I was destined to do great things with the written word.
Pity, all this time later, I’ve turned into a self-critical monster, where it seems nothing I write is any good.
So, does that mean we need to be less critical of our work? After all, through the years, when I’ve shared novels and short stories with others, they have all universally said they’re quite good.
So…
It’s time to go back to the previous day’s work and rework it. Yes, the idea that I wanted to write about is where I wanted the story to go, it’s just the execution.
The problem is, since then a few other ideas have been running around in the back of my head, and these could be added or used to further the current plotline.
The other problem is, it is one of the six stories that I’m writing by the seat of my pants, you know, the way some pilots like to fly a plane, without all that computer backup. Similarly, this is the way I sometimes like to write.
It’s as much a surprise to me is it is to the reader.
There’s good arguments for having planned the story from start to finish, but with these, I like to write it and see where it takes me. They’re episodic, so sometimes I get to write three of four episodes at a time, and these would most likely in a book become a chapter.
Last night I wrote two episodes, but it seems that it might need pointers back in previous episodes, because we all like to leave a trail of crumbs for the reader so when they get to the denouement, they remember, ah yes, back in chapter two such and such happened, but why am I only remembering it now?
Ok, enough convincing myself I’m a good writer, it’s time to get back to work…
Searching for locations: Auckland, New Zealand – Another city that has a tower
Nearly every city has a high building, a tower, or a large Ferris wheel.
London had the London eye
Paris has the Eiffel tower
The Galata in Istanbul
The CN Tower in Toronto
The towers of San Gimignano
Pisa has a leaning tower
We’ve managed to see all of the above bar the Galata in Istanbul. One day we might get there.
But, on this side of the world, there are two, the Sydney Tower, and the Sky Tower in Auckland, which we just visited recently.
It’s not a tall tower, but it definitely gives great vies of Auckland, particularly to the north
The mountain in the background at the top of the photo is of a volcano on Rangitoto Island. When we were visiting, there were reports that it might become active again.
To give a height perspective, it didn’t seem all that far down to the apartment building and gardens nearby.
Inspiration, Maybe – Volume 2
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
Perhaps it was.
© Charles Heath 2020-2021
Coming soon. Find the above story and 49 others like it in:
Writing a book in 365 days – 10
Day 10
Apparently, we are still discussing the implements with which we choose to put words on paper, and it seems that choice of implement might make a difference.
I have a degree of scepticism because I generally get words down on my phone, the only implement that is nearby at all times., no matter where I am.
Of course, many years ago I always travelled with little pocket-sized notebooks and a pen, rather than a pencil, to write. I still have all of these, several hundred in fact, in several shoeboxes in the cupboard in my writing room.
Over the years I have accumulated many A5-sized notebooks I bought where there were stationery sales, and now use these to both make notes or write. I tend not to use the smaller notebooks now, but I have a hundred or so sitting in a drawer just in case.
But do you like to write using a biro, with smudgy ink, a pen with a rollerball tip with less smudge, a felt-tip pen, which, depending on the paper type, can leach through, making it difficult to write on both sides, a fountain pen with ink, the old-fashioned way of writing letters, and some of the older writers back in the day?
I remember my early days in school, grade three in fact, when we switched from pencil to pen and ink. It was very messy, to begin with, but I remember vividly being the ink monitor, the one who filled the ink wells, and discovering my schoolmate’s prelidiction for stuffing bits of blotting paper into the well for whatever reason.
Even now it would be a messy way to write.
But the choice is yours.
Tomorrow, at last, we get to do some more writing.
‘The Devil You Don’t’ – A beta reader’s view
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
…
Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow
…
In a word: Flower
It’s what we expect to see when we walk past the front of some houses but instead sometimes see lawn, rocks, or a disaster.
They are what makes the difference between a delightful street and an ugly one, and by that I mean flowers.
By definition though, it means the state or period in which the plant’s flowers have developed and opened/
Just beware the man who turns up with a bunch of flowers that look vaguely familiar to those that grow in your neighbour’s gardens.
They are also in abundance in horticultural gardens, and in florist shops.
My favourites are roses.
And just a word of warning, look out for triffids. If you read John Wyndham’s science fiction you’ll know what I mean.
Another meaning for the word is to reach the optimum stage of development, though the word bloom could also be used to describe the same thing.
There is another similar-sounding word, flour, but this is the stuff used to make bread, scones, and puddings.
By definition, it is the result of grinding wheat or other grains to a powder.
If something is said to be floury, then it means it is bland.
The cinema of my dreams – It continued in London – Episode 23
What’s the Opera got to do with it?
…
I had hoped never to see Rodby again, and yet here I was in that oppressively warm wood polish-smelling office of his, sitting uncomfortably opposite him, a very large and clear desk between us.
In all the time I’d known him, and those visits to his office, there had never been anything on it. Not even a phone.
The last time I was in this position, to inform him of my retirement, I’d been reluctant to put the resignation envelope on the pristine surface.
Significantly, it was a month to the day after I left Larry’s mother’s house in Sorrento.
The day after I went with Cecilia to her audition, and she smashed it, getting the role from a rather astonished casting director, and director. He was calling it a possible break-out performance, in a whole different language that I didn’t understand.
That same night I found Juliet dining alone in the hotel restaurant and told her the good news, but her brother had already called her. We had dinner, and it could have been more, but there was that Cecilia thing in the back of her mind so we parted as friends.
And at a loose end, Venice no longer hold any significance for me, I moved back to London.
I should have gone to Paris. There, it would have been harder for Alfie to find me.
He had been giving me the ‘come back’ look, one that I had taken a long time to learn how to ignore.
Seeing he wasn’t making any impact, he said, “They found Larry.”
An enigmatic statement. Who found Larry?
“The Italian police recovered the body, in a little-used area of Lake Como. No signs of physical damage, not shot or stabbed, but apparently, he died of natural causes. We’re still waiting for a definitive coroner’s report. You never really elaborated on what happened at his mother’s house.”
My report was short and lacked detail, more notable for what I didn’t say rather than what I did.
“Nothing to tell. Brenda just told him his days of running the organization were over, she and Jaime Meyers had collaboratively taken over, and things would be different. I notice several other hard-line criminals have been taken off the streets since, so Inspector Crowley’s arrangement with her is working. A win-win situation. And you don’t have to deal with Larry anymore.”
“That’s the problem. If something is too good to be true, it generally is. I have to wonder what has replaced him.”
“I’m retired sir. No longer interested. Why am I here?”
I could see he had more, possibly to pique my interest, but just shrugged.
“Nothing of any importance. I thought you might want to know what happened to Larry. And Martha wants me to go to the opera tonight and she specifically asked me to ask you, and as you know she does not take no for an answer.”
I shrugged. He was right about his wife, a force of nature to be reckoned with. I had met her several times, and she had been intrigued with Violetta and had been devastated when she learned of her death.
“Then I guess I’d better dust off the monkey suit.”
“Good. I’ll text you where and when and send a driver to pick you up.”
© Charles Heath 2022
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 