Bryan Islip's Blog, page 35
May 3, 2012
Mr Dickens and I (me?)
There’s nothing new under the sun? Maybe, but there’s plenty that’s new to me or you or the great majority of us.
On the first day of each month throughout 2011 I published, free, through www.bryanislipauthor.com a fifteen minute (around 3000 words) fictional short story written from scratch over the preceding thirty days. Then, in January this year I self-published the complete collection, calling it ‘Twelve of Diamonds’. In paperback first, ref. ISBN 978-0-9555193-4-5 and now as an e-book via the mighty Amazon’s mighty Kindle. So there sits my work, it has to be said going nowhere particularly fast, alongside my two full length novels, one other collection of short stories and my booklet, ‘An Incomer’s Views On Wester-Ross in 24 Paintings, Poems and Narratives’.
A good number of subscribers asked me to continue this monthly short story idea into 2012. But, perhaps suffering an excess of Hogmanay over-confidence, perhaps from the well known been-there-done-that syndrome I decided, like Monty Python, now for something different.
Since January this year I’ve been writing a brand new novel, publishing it free of charge to subscribers via my website. On the last day of each month the whole novel in progress wings its way out through cyber space with all new chapters added to the re-edited previous ones.
Yes, pretty much as Mr Dickens did it in 1836; i.e. in instalments. Pickwick Papers - although of course on paper. As I was saying, there really is little new under the sun. My new novel is provisionally entitled, The Book.
What’s it about? It’s about a book, a very special one. And its effect on the family of its finder. Read it and let me know what you think. Charles Dickens’ wife’s dentist certainly did - and look what happened to Pickwick Papers!
On the first day of each month throughout 2011 I published, free, through www.bryanislipauthor.com a fifteen minute (around 3000 words) fictional short story written from scratch over the preceding thirty days. Then, in January this year I self-published the complete collection, calling it ‘Twelve of Diamonds’. In paperback first, ref. ISBN 978-0-9555193-4-5 and now as an e-book via the mighty Amazon’s mighty Kindle. So there sits my work, it has to be said going nowhere particularly fast, alongside my two full length novels, one other collection of short stories and my booklet, ‘An Incomer’s Views On Wester-Ross in 24 Paintings, Poems and Narratives’.
A good number of subscribers asked me to continue this monthly short story idea into 2012. But, perhaps suffering an excess of Hogmanay over-confidence, perhaps from the well known been-there-done-that syndrome I decided, like Monty Python, now for something different.
Since January this year I’ve been writing a brand new novel, publishing it free of charge to subscribers via my website. On the last day of each month the whole novel in progress wings its way out through cyber space with all new chapters added to the re-edited previous ones.
Yes, pretty much as Mr Dickens did it in 1836; i.e. in instalments. Pickwick Papers - although of course on paper. As I was saying, there really is little new under the sun. My new novel is provisionally entitled, The Book.
What’s it about? It’s about a book, a very special one. And its effect on the family of its finder. Read it and let me know what you think. Charles Dickens’ wife’s dentist certainly did - and look what happened to Pickwick Papers!
May 1, 2012
Observations
A most beautiful day. All the colours of the Highlands. Cloudless. Blue mirror sea.
Wildlife: cuckoo still at it - where does he (she?) get the energy after his (her?) x thousand miles flight north?
From plus thirty degrees into plus five here, this morning.
Pretty little yellow-headed siskin at the bird seed feeder.
Rabbit setting up home under our front garden acacia. Remember as a small boy being taught the gypsy trick of pushing a thorny briar down the hole to find if it was a blind breeder. If it comes back with fur on thorns it is. I put my arm down, catch hold of a squirming baby, take it home warm inside my shirt for a pet. Of course it died. I remember the tears, the reproaches.
Ten centimetre fishes skittering about in the air and across the surface close in on the lochside. Being hunted? Of course. All is not peace and quiet subsea any more than it is up here in our world.
Last evening we watch newborn lambs up on the hillfield at evening play. Jumping stiff-legged, dashing wildly in line astern (who elects himself / herself leader of the gang? 'follow me, kids'), stock still on top of rocky rise; I'm the king of the castle, off again. Unheeding mother ewe munches fresh green grass. Lost all her own joie de vivre after the first visit of the tup (ram to those south of the border). Wonder why? Anyway she has done her job, fulfilled her role: more grist to the human mill. (I do love a joint of roasted lamb.)
Dee's tadpoles may or may not survive. She brought them home from the fast drying puddle where they were rather stupidly spawned. Now our own garden puddle is drying out. Time for the hosepipe.
Yesterday a gentleman upbraided me ('as a writer') for using the 'Delia and I' instead of 'Delia and me'. Funny that. Can't tell you what my English master declared in regards to the latter. Far too elitist for 2012.
Wildlife: cuckoo still at it - where does he (she?) get the energy after his (her?) x thousand miles flight north?
From plus thirty degrees into plus five here, this morning.
Pretty little yellow-headed siskin at the bird seed feeder.
Rabbit setting up home under our front garden acacia. Remember as a small boy being taught the gypsy trick of pushing a thorny briar down the hole to find if it was a blind breeder. If it comes back with fur on thorns it is. I put my arm down, catch hold of a squirming baby, take it home warm inside my shirt for a pet. Of course it died. I remember the tears, the reproaches.
Ten centimetre fishes skittering about in the air and across the surface close in on the lochside. Being hunted? Of course. All is not peace and quiet subsea any more than it is up here in our world.
Last evening we watch newborn lambs up on the hillfield at evening play. Jumping stiff-legged, dashing wildly in line astern (who elects himself / herself leader of the gang? 'follow me, kids'), stock still on top of rocky rise; I'm the king of the castle, off again. Unheeding mother ewe munches fresh green grass. Lost all her own joie de vivre after the first visit of the tup (ram to those south of the border). Wonder why? Anyway she has done her job, fulfilled her role: more grist to the human mill. (I do love a joint of roasted lamb.)
Dee's tadpoles may or may not survive. She brought them home from the fast drying puddle where they were rather stupidly spawned. Now our own garden puddle is drying out. Time for the hosepipe.
Yesterday a gentleman upbraided me ('as a writer') for using the 'Delia and I' instead of 'Delia and me'. Funny that. Can't tell you what my English master declared in regards to the latter. Far too elitist for 2012.
April 30, 2012
First cuckoo, Irish poet
27th April and we hear our first cuckoo. It really is uncanny. Every year within a few days (maximum four) they arrive to bell out their duosyllabic signatures from the sparse stands of trees hereabouts, having flown, we are told, all the way from West Africa. The cuckoo always minds me of Francis Ledwidge, that Irish Nationalist, ultra working class poet ...
Was
still the barred cuckoo so real to you,
In
Crocknahara meadows by the Boyne?
In 1005 I wrote a series of poems addressed to the poets of world war one. The collection was (is) called 'On Wounded Fields'. This is the one to Francis Ledwidge ... the italicised words are Ledwidge's
To Francis Ledwidge August 1887 - July 1917
Did
you still, “Hear roads calling and the
hills
And the rivers, wondering
where I am,”
At
Hellfire Corner, sitting drinking tea
As
arced unseen that deadly mortar bomb
Which
was to end an Irish poet’s dream?
A
long way sure, from Owen, Brooke, and those
Smart
young men in smarter khaki clothes
Who
never mended any metalled road
Yet
were your brothers of the silken verse
And
knew as well as you the smell of death.
I
wonder what became of all your clan
(Nine
children to evicted farming man:)
Perhaps
your father was a dreamer too,
Dreaming, “Songs of the fields,” just as you,
His
Celtic longing more than mind can bear.
But
what genetic streak of ancient Gael
Gave
will to write and sensitivity
To
know; “And greater than a poet’s fame
A little grave that has no
name;” tell me,
You
school-less twelve year old adrift, tell me,
Lance
Corporal Francis Ledwidge, fighting man,
Sometime
Slane Corps of Irish Nationalists
Now
Inniskilling Fusiliers, enrolled
To
kill the foe of She who’s not your friend
And
fight for her through hell’s Gallipoli.
And
how, I wondered, could a poet write
In
winter trenches on the brutal Somme
Of
lilting “Fairy Music” (“Ceol Sidhe”)?
Was
still the barred cuckoo so real to you,
In
Crocknahara meadows by the Boyne?
Always
you yearned for mother, Ireland,
“The fields that call
across the world to me,”
And
now near where the spires of Ypers stand
You
dream your dreams, denied reality,
Beneath
your wild flowers ‘till the end.
Bryan Islip, May 1995
April 29, 2012
A walk down Memory Lanes
Recently we stayed in York with Hazel, sister of my late wife, and her husband Digger. It is only eight years since, after an absence of some 50 years, I was able to return with my second wife Delia to the city I knew so well in the days of my R.A.F. National Service - 1952/55 would you believe. We were made more eight years ago. I am happy to say we still are.
Most people know that York is a most beautiful city, crowned by its amazing Minster and absolutely crammed full of the most dramatic of English history. Fortunately my brother-in-law is a positive fountain of information and so we are always able to come away from our visits steeped in awe, in beauty, in thoughts of the past.
It is the past of which I am writing today. Not the ancient past but the past of 1953 and 1954. Hazel and Digger took us around the narrow streets of the city centre following a recent - and interesting - innovation: the Cat Walk. You follow directions on a leaflet to find various model cats crawling up walls, sitting in unlikely corners, on the odd rooftop, etc.
In our perambulations so we passed, then went into York's imposing Assembly Rooms - in my day a dance dance for boy meet girl but now a most elegant tea-room complete with well remembered marble pillars etc etc. We then moved on to find the old De Grey Rooms - another of the city's five dance halls, natural desinations for all kinds of British and American servicemen stationed around what was, in those days, very much a garrison town. Although now privately owned and operated as some kind of a conference centre a kind lady at the door, after I told he this was where I met my late wife, Hazel's sister, was happy to show us around. This was for me an eerie experience. Nothing, but nothing seemed to have changed. Same band area, same beautifully sprung maple floor, same gallery. I could almost hear the swing music and the Strauss waltzes, see the well-suited young men and the well-frocked young ladies, mostly each side of the floor by gender, mostly puffing away on Craven A's or Balkan Sobranie's (those ladies wanting to appear sophisticated, the latter!).
That evening the four of us repaired to Peter's and Doris' house for a splendid Chinese meal. Peter is one of my brothers-in-law. Carol came too. Her late, badly missed husband Michael was another of my brothers-in-Law. Great evening of wine and chat and laughs and talk of things past and a little customary shaking of heads re some things present.
Although of course Dee had not been party to those old times good and bad, she fitted into this scene as a hand into a glove. That is one of the reasons why she and I are together and will always be - at least until the end of always.
Most people know that York is a most beautiful city, crowned by its amazing Minster and absolutely crammed full of the most dramatic of English history. Fortunately my brother-in-law is a positive fountain of information and so we are always able to come away from our visits steeped in awe, in beauty, in thoughts of the past.
It is the past of which I am writing today. Not the ancient past but the past of 1953 and 1954. Hazel and Digger took us around the narrow streets of the city centre following a recent - and interesting - innovation: the Cat Walk. You follow directions on a leaflet to find various model cats crawling up walls, sitting in unlikely corners, on the odd rooftop, etc.
In our perambulations so we passed, then went into York's imposing Assembly Rooms - in my day a dance dance for boy meet girl but now a most elegant tea-room complete with well remembered marble pillars etc etc. We then moved on to find the old De Grey Rooms - another of the city's five dance halls, natural desinations for all kinds of British and American servicemen stationed around what was, in those days, very much a garrison town. Although now privately owned and operated as some kind of a conference centre a kind lady at the door, after I told he this was where I met my late wife, Hazel's sister, was happy to show us around. This was for me an eerie experience. Nothing, but nothing seemed to have changed. Same band area, same beautifully sprung maple floor, same gallery. I could almost hear the swing music and the Strauss waltzes, see the well-suited young men and the well-frocked young ladies, mostly each side of the floor by gender, mostly puffing away on Craven A's or Balkan Sobranie's (those ladies wanting to appear sophisticated, the latter!).
That evening the four of us repaired to Peter's and Doris' house for a splendid Chinese meal. Peter is one of my brothers-in-law. Carol came too. Her late, badly missed husband Michael was another of my brothers-in-Law. Great evening of wine and chat and laughs and talk of things past and a little customary shaking of heads re some things present.
Although of course Dee had not been party to those old times good and bad, she fitted into this scene as a hand into a glove. That is one of the reasons why she and I are together and will always be - at least until the end of always.
April 28, 2012
James Joyce going nowhere beautifully
In the years around world war one so much of human life changed for ever. On the one hand that war provoked physical invention on a scale previously unimaginable and on the other it signalled the...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
April 27, 2012
Going with Gabriel
Sometimes you hear a voice in the darkness that knows the way - and knows what you are saying. This lady - Michelle Frost - who I've never met except through her brilliant novel 'First Light' -...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
Come walk with me
I am in search of a literary agent (actually, an 'agent for literature', I think) particularly but not exclusively for my novel in progress, The Book. Yesterday one of those I approached requested 'a...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
April 26, 2012
The madness of numbers
Interesting piece in today's Guardian ....
Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges
guardian.co.uk, 26 Apr 2012
John Vidal
Nuclear disaster or plague likely unless...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges
guardian.co.uk, 26 Apr 2012
John Vidal
Nuclear disaster or plague likely unless...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
Genesis
I am often asked about how a particular Highlands landscape painting came about - what led me to that subject, and my interpretation in pastels of that subject.
On top left is a collage of...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
On top left is a collage of...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
April 17, 2012
Fiction - any answers?
Here’s a controversial statement: all things that live have to take the lives of others in order to thrive, survive, progenitise. A sapling tree tries to suffocate its neighbours thus to obtain more...
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
Visit http://www.bryanislipauthor.com to read more about Bryan's writing
