So at this stage I’ve covered November 5 totals and I’m ever so slightly ahead if only it was still last Friday. I guess I could talk about all sorts of things to try to get caught up. If I could just do another 1,000 or so words I’d be catching up. But if I’m honest I need closer to 3,500 to be right. That’s not going to happen today. But I can write anything I want, of course, nobody is saying I’m writing a novel and no-one is pretending this is going anywhere except on my blog. It’s an exercise, nothing more. It’s like being at the gym. It doesn’t matter whether I’m on eh cross trainer or in the pool. It’s exercise. And that’s what this is. I need to make sure I can still write quickly and create something to fill a page or three.
OK, so the word count currently says 155 and it’s 12 minutes to six. So if I type about something for 12 minutes I’ll be able to see how much I’m writing at any time. Not sure what I should write about though. Jut recently we went to Glastonbury .It’s one of my favourite places ever. I’ve been interested in prehistory, and indeed history, if it’s early enough, for a very long time. I can remember when I was a kid I wanted to see all the archaeological sites in the country. Back then I thought archaeological site meant prehistoric site, but it doesn’t does it? But when I was about 12 I thought that archaeology meant the stone age. It’s all to do with the school I went to. Not my secondary school but my second primary school (if you can follow that) where my teachers were interested in good stuff. We had to learn maths and English and all the basics. We were taught that the ‘standard’ subjects were tools. They were what we needed in order to study the things we enjoyed. If you can read you can learn anything. If you can use a dictionary you can understand anything.
These days everyone thinks the internet is the answer to everything, but you actually can’t browse information on the internet. You might think you can. Because they call it browsing, but you don’t actually browse. You go to the point you ask about and then browse various versions of the answer. You don’t flick through pages and catch sight of things you never even dreamed of. You can catch all sorts of stuff along the way when you look stuff up in an encyclopaedia. Sometimes the things you encounter are more interesting than what you set out to study. You can follow up a trail that leads from one place to another. Between H to He, (who am the only one) you could find hairdressing, helium, head lice, hawthorn, happiness, handicrafts, and heaven. Of course you might have been intending to study hallmarks.
Just as an aside it’s now six and my word count is 506. That’s 351 words in 12 minutes. Or just shy of 30 words a minute. That means that I should theoretically be able to complete my daily total in an hour (or my lunch break for a better way of describing it.) Never happens though. OK. Back to the narrative.
I was talking about research and how proper books are better than the internet. But what about being up to date? Yes, the internet might be more immediate, but reference books are more fun! Specially reference books with pictures. although there are some fun books that don’t have pictures. There’s a great thing called Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It’s full of all kinds of fascinating but useless information. I love looking things up in it because I always end up following trails through its cross references. At the bottom of every entry there’s usually a collection of words in bold that tell you to “See October” or whatever, and so you head off to October, where you find out all about hallowe’en traditions and it’ll say ‘see jack o lantern’ so you go to that and it’ll tell you all about how they’ve been made from every kind of vegetable you can imagine including mangold worzels and so you head off to the page on mangold worzels and find out they’re grown in Lincolnshire so you look that up and before you know it you’re looking up the Lincoln imp, and that leads on to green men in churches which wasn’t your intention but is a fascinating subject.
Then people ask me why I know so much stuff. It’s a trick, of course, and it’s down to reading again. A long time ago when I was first starting out reading my dad used to talk to me about books. Every morning he would question me about whatever my latest book was. I have such fond memories of it. “What are you reading? Who wrote it? Tell me the story so far” and I would tell him what had happened. Describe the characters and outline the narrative. He’d ask about which characters I liked and who I didn’t like and why. If I ever got the story wrong he’d tell me, gently but firmly, that perhaps I should go back and read that section again.
I was convinced that my Dad had read every book in the library because he always knew when I’d got it wrong. It was years before I realised that he was reading the book along with me, after I went to bed, so he’d know what it was about. He could question me about it and hold a meaningful conversation with me. At the end of each book he would then ask me if I enjoyed it and why. It meant that for ever afterwards he’d be able to hand me a book and say ‘ you’ll like that’ and he was never wrong. It also meant that ever afterwards I would remember whatever I read in case Dad asked me about it. He’s been dead 18 years but I still do it. I even talk to him in my mind sometimes about the book, why I enjoyed it, or not, and whether I thought he would. I miss him desperately.
I can remember a time on the run up to Christmas when I visited my parents and mother said Dad had insisted on buying a book for me but she didn’t think I’d like it. When they told me what it was I said I’d already bought it, read it and loved it. Sure enough Dad did his usual thing. “What’s it about? Who are the main characters?” So I told him. Then he asked me an odd question that he’d never asked before. “Does it have pictures?” “Yes” I said, and described them to him. Half page black and white line drawings. I could see them in my head. Clear as day. So he suggested I should fetch the book and show him. I was stunned to discover that the pictures didn’t exist in the book. Only in my imagination. I can still see them in my mind’s eye. I know the scenes so well. But they still don;’t exist! That book was Duncton Wood by William Horwood. How did he know? How did my Dad know that the story was so clearly embedded in my mind that I had created illustrations? Had we really formed such a strong bond that he could read my mind like a book? I think so. I just wish that I could draw well enough to make those illustrations.
How on earth did I get here from starting to write about Glastonbury? It’s the way my mind works. I wander from topic to topic, like the route through Brewer’s Dictionary. It doesn’t make a lot of sense maybe, but it’s interesting nevertheless. It also means that I’m very good at general knowledge quizzes as long as I’m not pitched against the clock. You see my brain has to follow similar lines in order to bring something out of my memory. I can’t take a direct route to a fact. I have to track along the line that put the fact in place originally. I follow a trail from fascinating idea to fascinating idea until I eventually reach my destination. Once in a while, particularly as I get older, I don’t actually reach my destination. Sometimes I’m close but just can’t remember that word or that fact or that memory that I’m trying to access.
So should I stil try to talk about Glastonbury? It’s a magical place and it’s been on my list of favourite places for years. I first went there as a child and remember going to the Abbey wth my parents to see the tomb of King Arthur who is reputedly buried there. He’s not real, of course. So he can’t be buried anywhere, but Glastonbury has been cashing in on him for years. It’s supposedly the place that Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus during the bit of the Bible that’s missing, between arguing with the elders in the temple and turning up to preach as an adult in his late 20s. There’s a myth about Joseph touching his staff to the ground and a white thorn tree sprang up. Several generations of tree later and they’re selling seedlings from the ‘original holy thorn’. Yeah right.
But I’ve been back to Glastonbury several times since and it isn’t for any Christian purpose. It’s spiritual alright but it’s the natural spirituality that’s grown up around the town that attracts me. Tales of th goddess and the green man and loads of other gods and spirits who belong to the greenwood and the wild. The sight of the huge hill called the tor in the distance, with its tower at the top, lifts my heart and gladdens my spirit. And so I return when I can. For hares and dragons and incense and candles and the weird costumes in green and red and blue, and the ribbons and the lace and the light and the crystals and all the rest of the strange and mysterious things that make the town unique.
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