Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "extract"
Extract No.1
This is the first extract from my book. It's a short one, after all this is a blog post and I don't want TL:DR to come up...ever.
Enjoy, next one on Friday.
I like the walk along the canal, water is soothing for some reason; even the fetid liquid that squats in the Regent’s Canal is soothing, despite its empty beer cans, tyres and trash. Why is that? The peace offered by bodies of water – perhaps it’s the idea of another world, silent, dark and cold, containing life totally different from us – the strange nature of its substance, both solid and liquid. Life-giving and life-removing, it creates borders and separates us from each other. I think it’s that, and the life-giving nature of water, which is deeply embedded in our souls. We recognise its power and, in an unknowing way, we worship it – it has power over us – we cannot live without it or in it, we cannot tame it or control it. It has us we do not have it. Is that why I love being close to water? Sometimes, on the rare occasions I get to be by the sea, I feel a powerful urge to walk into it and drown, to let it close over my body and remove me from the world. I have heard that drowning is a peaceful way to die.
Enjoy, next one on Friday.
I like the walk along the canal, water is soothing for some reason; even the fetid liquid that squats in the Regent’s Canal is soothing, despite its empty beer cans, tyres and trash. Why is that? The peace offered by bodies of water – perhaps it’s the idea of another world, silent, dark and cold, containing life totally different from us – the strange nature of its substance, both solid and liquid. Life-giving and life-removing, it creates borders and separates us from each other. I think it’s that, and the life-giving nature of water, which is deeply embedded in our souls. We recognise its power and, in an unknowing way, we worship it – it has power over us – we cannot live without it or in it, we cannot tame it or control it. It has us we do not have it. Is that why I love being close to water? Sometimes, on the rare occasions I get to be by the sea, I feel a powerful urge to walk into it and drown, to let it close over my body and remove me from the world. I have heard that drowning is a peaceful way to die.
A tiny bit of book.....
it's all true......perhaps
The sun glints off the dirty green water. It’s not deep, maybe five or six feet at best, perhaps less. It had been cleared of most of its underwater junk in the 1980s and it’s usable.
There are basins where narrowboats are permanently parked up with people living on them, a fantasy of a bohemian travelling life complete with broadband and satellite communications, never far from the upmarket restaurants, bars and clubs of the city. The grimy warehouses of the past have been removed and replaced by luxury new-build apartments or reconditioned into slick, feel poor, live rich, lo-fi, hi-tech, media villages.
Nothing is left of the industry that caused the canal to come into existence in the first place. The tall new white buildings alongside the canal are topped with penthouse apartments that gaze down at the old canal.Through the floor-to- ceiling glass windows, I can see little people, like figures on a wedding cake.
I snake along the path, nobody noticing me. I hug the walls and dart under the bridges. I am not in a hurry. It’s just the way I walk: fast, urgent and with purpose, even though I have none.
The sun glints off the dirty green water. It’s not deep, maybe five or six feet at best, perhaps less. It had been cleared of most of its underwater junk in the 1980s and it’s usable.
There are basins where narrowboats are permanently parked up with people living on them, a fantasy of a bohemian travelling life complete with broadband and satellite communications, never far from the upmarket restaurants, bars and clubs of the city. The grimy warehouses of the past have been removed and replaced by luxury new-build apartments or reconditioned into slick, feel poor, live rich, lo-fi, hi-tech, media villages.
Nothing is left of the industry that caused the canal to come into existence in the first place. The tall new white buildings alongside the canal are topped with penthouse apartments that gaze down at the old canal.Through the floor-to- ceiling glass windows, I can see little people, like figures on a wedding cake.
I snake along the path, nobody noticing me. I hug the walls and dart under the bridges. I am not in a hurry. It’s just the way I walk: fast, urgent and with purpose, even though I have none.
Angels stand corrected...
I have to have a blog...the site told me, my publisher told me, my publicist told me, and even my turkish barber told me, as he was administering the finest of close shaves. So I thought I had better
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