A363 Chapter 2

I have taken exercise 2.2 from the new course and written a short story. It's about a woman cleaning a floor in an empty flat. Predictably, she's musing on the identity of the deceased, elderly owner when she discovers a tiny clue that might explain her unnatural demise. Immediately I wrote it, I applied chapter two and realised that her speculations could become more dramatic if the person she realises may have committed a crime actually walks in, if only to check whether the flat will be ready for the estate agents to begin viewings (he's very keen to get his inheritance). So I can move the story up a gear and this is the big, plot edit that I will get on with today. Then I can work on the language another time.

For activity 2.2 I also played around with the Uncle Fred blog entries and a theme immediately presented itself from the week I picked randomly - Fred waters his mother's grave, itself a very retrospective look, and there's the added dimension of the seventy year gap between the diary entries and the blog. And if course, Dunkirk rumbling in the background.

He waters Mother's grave
Plants geraniums and petunias
While Dunkirk guns echo through
The night-time air

He walks along the railway path
Rain softening his day
Buys Dinkey's food while desperate men
Crush into the grey sea

He washes the sashes round the back
As they rattle with the echoes
Of the Dunkirk guns,
An walk over dusky Cannon Hill

Warm sun on the new blue suit
The first rose blooms, startling
In cerise, scarlet, ochre and yellow
An explosion of colour.

OK this is just the raw material, but I'm amazed at the juxtaposition of the Dunkirk drama unfolding (which he, of course, wasn't as aware at the time as we are now) and the normal life that had to go on just the same. All from four diary entries! Go A363...

We've got a date for the boys college interviews - my attendance at Winchester is somewhat dependant on at least one of the boys getting in - otherwise I would have to go into halls or share a house (gulp) with someone else's teenagers. And we have to find a house - if not then, at least in July. It helps that the long list of requirements we had for this adventure are being ticked off - I have a car (tick), Carey has passed his driving test so can co-pilot (tick) I'm in at Winchester (tick). Now I just have the other hurdles of getting funding for the boys, them on courses, packing, renting, moving and saying goodbye to the bear for weeks at a time. I love my bear, I miss him if he goes away for one night. This is going to be tricky for both of us.