Friday, January 30, 2009

It's...

It's the smell of asphalt after the rains
And the puddles that ruin your favourite shoes.
Sometimes overhearing the ridiculous rant of a stranger
At an even more obnoxious bus driver.

It's the cherry pink blossoms that scatter on the library path in March,
Following Spring's sprouting daffodils.
And a hot bowl of pear crumble with vanilla ices,
In the warm, wooden kitchen.

It's your laugh over another silly story,
After too much red at All Bar One.
Or the patrons who just can't find the loo near the cloakroom.
And the Orchestra pit that always rings with magic.

It's the wide, green spaces that roll out for miles,
Empty skies and cow pats.
Farmer's markets and Lancashire cheese,
And tea at six o'clock on the dot.

It's the sea at my toes at Morecombe Bay,
The salt in the air and in my eyes,
A chill through my clothes,
A song in my veins.

It's being on the Virgin Express leaving London,
The concrete fading to verde.
Tower blocks to oaks,
Bustle to the open.

It's you waiting at Heathrow,
Time and stories on your lips.
It's with you.
That's home.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Relevant Magazine!

Hello lovely ones,

I finally have the link to a digital version of my article with Relevant Magazine on the Indian caste system that was printed in the Jan /Feb 2009. Have a read and tell me your thoughts!

Thanks for reading :)

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/issue/37.php

Thursday, January 22, 2009

The joys of the cyber pen

At present I am in heady love with the current older children's story I'm writing, 'Keepsake'. It has not been such a pleasure to write fiction since University when I would boycott writing my history essays for the sake of fun short stories about my house-mates.

I also managed to jot down some sort of synopsis to give you a clue as to what it is about.

Here it is:

Keepsake – A Synopsis


Ridley, ‘Red’, Sinclair is 11 years old and the only child of Lena and Liam Sinclair. After the abrupt and untimely death of his mother, Ridley finds himself moved to a renovated farmhouse in north England along with his father and grandmother, Grandee. It is in Eyrely Woods Farm that two very strange things happen to him. First he is given an encrypted diary from his deceased mother, one that holds her most dark secrets and one that he must unravel as requested to, by her. And secondly he comes into contact with Kirk McPhee; a dead girl who does not know how she died or why Ridley is the only one who can see her. With the help of his grief counsellor’s granddaughter, Imogen Rogers, Ridley sets about trying to find the answers and reasons to some of the most guarded secrets he has ever known.

*

‘Keepsake’ is a story about coming to terms with one of the most painful personal tragedies through the eyes of a child and how through talking, a found keep safe diary and new friendships, the heaviness of grief and guilt can be lifted.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Stars

Last night at an in-depth Bible Study I've recently started attending I heard something that caught my very imagination in mid-thought. When God said to Abraham, 'look at the stars, your descendents will be like so' (paraphrased here) it is echoed in Psalm 147 to beautiful effect. 'He calls out the stars and He knows them by name.'

He wasn't talking about constellations and formations. He was talking about- us.

We were and are those stars.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

For sheer pleasure

Too my absolute horror I have discovered that many in my new circles do not enjoy reading. For many it is seen as a chore, something you do at school and college and then for the life and sanity of you, never to be done again in the freedom of adulthood.

Try as I may to have expressed the simple wonder of reading a good story, I can't seem to convey or even draw interest to the wonders of ink and yummy smelling bound paper. Nor the unyielding mystery of an invoked imagination to create worlds, faces, histories, loves and horrors. To make friends, to be half way across the seas but to have not moved a spot, to be invited into a secret, a hushed wonder.

Instead I've been told, 'Yeah, I'll just watch the movie.' (Insert huge strangled gasp) Despite knowing full well the art of film has to omit some of the play on words to fit into the budgeted time and film reel.

I don't know but it does make me sad that there are entire people walking about happy just to feed off one person's interpretation instead of peeling back the layers for themselves and discovering that the world around them just got bigger.

Perhaps it's because I'm reading 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' and have been treated to a story-tellers delight. Or perhaps it's my trade as a Wordsmith that makes me so.

Or perhaps it is that I have found that the imagination and the words that carry you there are as infinite, relentless and as pure as ever rolling space.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Felix sit annus novus!

And so here it is; 2009. And it's a beautiful start; the sun is shining merrily through a clear sky, the dogs aren't making their usual psychotic racket and everyone is cheery. Perhaps it comes with all the anticipation of what's to come; a fresh page, a blank sheet, a seemingly as yet unwritten present.

I've always been one who wants or rather needs a word for the year. To have my compass set at the ready pointing me due North so that when all the windswept crap (that's guaranteed to come) does arrive, I'll be more than ready.

And yet this morning, the first of the 364 that's still to come, I've stumbled upon Isa 43:16, 18-19:
16 This is what the LORD says—
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters
18 "Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.


The thing is I've clung to this word already and yes it was of help but I was hoping and expecting for something a bit more explosive. But then that's my err. God's word never changes, or old or stagnant, or dull. It remains what it has always been, a torch light.

So I'll keep it and mull over it and stew in it and wait for the pieces to come together and for me to see the relevance of a word I've already received.

One good thing though-it speaks of promised goodies, of the brand new and the impossible happening-so perhaps there is something explosive on the way?