A New Day

I'm back on my feet after a three day enforced break. I managed to read A Graveyard Book  by Neil Gaiman while I had the migraine - in bit sized portions - and loved it. What an imaginative book, that plays with the idea of family and ghosts and prophecy and all the usual monsters (werewolves, vampires, ghouls) but in such imaginative incarnations. Highly recommended for children and for adults, though the older you are, the more you'll need the light on at bedtime.

Working on my poetry for TMA05, I've reworked a very painful scene from a bit of fiction I wrote last year about my sister's funeral. I don't cry easily, but something made me cry all day that day, as if something I'd been hanging onto for years was untied. The poem was very simple and not very good, but a few lines stood out and have become a pantoum that fits very well with the sestinas I've written. Pantoums make you repeat lines, so they have to be flexible enough to fit with different meanings but good enough to be worth repeating.

I'm completely homesick today, I haven't been home since January, and I'm playing Ludovico Einauldi's Divinire, which I last played at home, the curtains drawn, the fire lit, and the scrabble board out. Music, like smells, can evoke the past so intensely. It's only thirteen days before a Bear turns up to take me home. I'm taking some stuff with me, books and DVD's that I've read, winter clothes... to make it easier to move back home in June.Then a whole month of music and scrabble... and a few assignments, and the children. I miss the view from the window, I never tire of looking over the nature reserve, listening to the river, watching the birds. 

Week 6 of Fantastic Fiction was a bit different. We sat in the dark while our tutor read us a ghost story by candlelight. Having discussed Breathe by Cliff McNish, which I thought was excellent except for the cop out ending, we talked about ghost stories and how they work. We have homework - to write a short ghost story from simple prompts. That should keep me busy, along with the assignment.