It’s late, I’m tired, but still the daily blog challenge (and I’m grateful for that).
So I’ve been flicking through the only notebook I have here with me, beautiful handstitched with a William Morris design on the front that I suspected would be too good for me to ever write in. But in the end I have filled it over the years, even though occasionally, with a mixture of poems and quotes and thoughts. There are still lots of pages left…it’s like a pocket without a bottom.
Today I’m putting my hand in and pulling some things out to share with you and see what you make of them.
I copied this quote out of The Times newspaper on Friday June 6, 2008, when sitting in the Jade Boulangerie in Hampstead, where I used to have a cappuccino and an almond croissant after walking on the Heath. Then I’d go next door to Daunt Bookshop, where I would always fall for the covers of books and buy more than I needed.
Here, Emily Eavis is describing why she keeps on running the Glastonbury Festival:
When I was younger, I remember sitting at the window of the house and seeing people walking past when they arrived on the site. It was the oddest thing. There was this real look of determination. An intense look. Like they were going to have the most amazing time. I remember feeling scared by this look. It was like you’re going to come here and you’re going to do something that’s going to change your life. And sometimes it does. I think that sort of…matters.
That was how it felt to me at the time teaching creative writing courses. People’s lives did change – and it did matter.
And here instead is a selection of conversation I overheard while sitting on a train, having returned to England for a visit, a couple of years ago, and just loving my total comprehension of what everybody was saying, no matter how weird the content.
I remember I couldn’t see this person, she was in the seats behind me, but I noted that she had the voice of a 70 year old:
I was dry. It’d been a long time since breakfast. He managed to find me a pint of John Smith’s.
Next I noted a 14 year old (?) daughter to her mother:
So – you talk to sheep?
Yes, but not in public.
Finally, a Brummie accented young man on his mobile:
No, you can’t do my sister. You’re not good enough for her. You’re out of her league….How long you been writing on her wall?
Next stop, fiction.
Letters from Trieste 