Our big garden is tired and begging for autumn to arrive. We’re in the tail end of meshed weather systems today and the humidity is tropical. Rain is falling and the waves are crashing on the beach. The garden needs a good fertilise and for the windiest summer for ages to cease. Hopefully next week I can post on how it looks but in the meantime – on Thursday I was in the city and took some pics of our little Matchbox garden…
Yesterday, I looked at the word count of Reliquary, my current manuscript, and realised I had passed the 100,000 mark. I was surprised. It seemed only a short time ago that I watched 50,000 tick over and then time just slowed and it seemed no matter how often I wrote, the numbers barely changed. Some days, I would delete a page or a paragraph. And at one point, I accidentally opened the file at the very beginning and decided I wanted to hit the readers pretty hard from the get-go and so added a kind of prologue to set the scene.
I have still to get the editor’s approval on that one but it works for me…
All writers will agree that a significant part of their time when they’re not writing, is quietly observing the human condition. The seasonal holiday gives one the greatest chance to do that as the jigsaw of characters falls across one’s path.
As Ernest Hemingway said in Death in the Afternoon:
Oh, crikey! I’ve observed the good, the bad and the downright ugly!
As Fred has said, this will probably be the last SoS from some of us because of Christmas at the end of the week. Just a bit busy…
Let’s start with a broader shot.
It’s been an horrendous couple of weeks with the seasonal equinoxial gales. We live at 42 degrees south latitude, commonly known as the Roaring Forties, so gardening has been something we’ve done only if we really really have to. Best to stay indoors or find a stretch of the coast under the shelter of cliff.
Our house painter says the winds make him melancholy, the teachers all say the pupils develop a kind of madness; our Jack Russell certainly does. I have a balance issue and so the sound-buffeting and the visual disturbance of trees waving and gyrating can bring on an attack of vertigo. But the gales are abating now and I’m in clean-up mode. Masses of whippy branches from the two willows, cossetting the gardens with as much water as possible and starting to shovel mulch all around after much water, so that summer doesn’t dry everything out.
Here’s my lot for this week:
Reliquary has taken an age to write.
Reading, researching, the passing away of my much-respected researcher, family issues, the farm, the gardens, the pandemic.
Ah yes, the pandemic…
Life has a way of intruding upon one’s best intentions.
Sometimes, like birthdays and babysitting, those occasions are craved and enjoyed. Or farm and garden times, when the seasons demand one’s presence.
But then there are other times.
What is tradition?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s apparently, ‘…a way of acting that people have… continued to follow…’ through time.
The way I celebrate my birthday has become one such.
Not long after we moved back to Tasmania from the mainland, I thought how wonderful it might be to celebrate my birthday with a trip to Maria Island. The island has played a huge part in my life. Through my childhood, before it became a national park and World Heritage site, it was our playground. We would play in the tumbledown houses, swim in glass-like water. Simply, we would live Swallows and Amazons.
Back in the Matchbox in the city, we’ve had a bucketload of rain. (Actually we had it on the coast too. How do folk in the UK cope with days of rain? Yikes!) But in the one hour of sunshine yesterday afternoon, and between planting lots of summer annuals, I took a few pics.
It all started when I was a little girl.
I was born with foot issues and it was suggested to Mum that I do ballet.
I used to trot off to RAD classes with a woman who scared the very devil out of me. Tall, dark hair in a tight bun and archtypically, the frosty ballet mistress – think Cruella Deville with a bun!
The hall was big and cold for we little children in short white ballet tunics with grosgrain pink sashes, and pink ballet shoes that tied with long satin ribbons. For someone like me, a pudgy little six year old who even then sensed she was an introvert, it was intimidating…
