Author: amo

Castle Dreams

unnamed2So Derek Murphy, otherwise known as Creativindie, is running yet another contest. A last-minute giveaway of a stay in one of two writing retreats, either a two-week stay in Portrush, Northern Ireland, or a couple of weeks in his NaNoWriMo Castle in Saint-Sylvestre-sur-Lot, France (in Aquitaine, apparently, which is the South of France – I had to google it).

Oh. My. Goodness. The way to enter this contest/giveaway is to post about it on your blog. Here. Doing it. And then you’re supposed to say which of the two you want to go to. Umm, YES. Yes please. Uh, you want me to choose? Sorry… just sorry, Derek, I can’t. Just pick me for either one, and I’ll be there with bells on. Because (and that’s condition #2, to say why you want to come), well, d’uh. Castle. Or Ireland. Ocean shore. British Isles. Europe. History. Stories woven into the very fabric of your surroundings. Wherever you look, there’s stories, tales just for the picking. You walk through a doorway, and your mind goes “I wonder who lived here a hundred years ago…”, and you see a lady with a tight corset crossing the hallway in front of you, her big hoop skirt swinging. And then you turn a corner and look out a window, and your mind skips on to “Did some noble lady ever sit on this window sill the way I do now, looking out for her knight to come back for her?” Or you get off the train (because, of course, you take the train to where you’re going – this is Europe, after all) and you think, “I wonder how it felt for a soldier in 1916 to come home to his family in this little town…” and “How long might this bakery have stood at that corner already, and did children sixty years ago have their noses pressed to the window just the way this little girl is doing now?”

Like I said, stories in every brick and stone, the very air you breathe suffused with inspiration. So of course I want to go on one of those retreats. Just looking at those websites had me spiralling off into dreams; I almost had my itinerary for how to get there all planned out…

Now, the third condition of entering this writing contest is to post a sample or outline of what you would be working on. Hmm. I don’t really like posting outlines or summaries in public before I’ve written the thing. My stories need to hatch in peace and quiet, not be dragged into the spotlight before they’re even able to open their eyes.

However, let’s just say I’d win the castle retreat [crosses fingers and toes, going “Please, please, please!”] [Yes, I can cross my toes. Can’t you?]. Of all the story ideas knocking about in my brain, I think it would be one of the fairy tale retellings that would take shape then, because, castle. That Château de Cadrès is the quintessential fairy tale castle, judging by the pictures. Sit back, close your eyes for a minute, open them again, and you don’t even have to bother imagining – you just describe what you see, people it with some characters, and bingo – story.

Now, as to what kind of story… As I said, a fairy tale. And like every good story, it always starts with a “What if…” In a fairy tale, the plot, the “what”, is already a given. So to turn a fairy tale into a full-length novel, what you want is a “what if…” of a different kind. Sometimes a “How come…” For example, have you ever wondered why the princess in the Grimms'”The Goose Girl” doesn’t try to defend herself when the wicked maid forces her to change places with her? How come she’s like that? Maybe she’s constitutionally shy or has a stammer which makes her afraid to speak up. Or, maybe, when she was growing up, her father and older brother were abusive bullies, and in consequence she’s terrified of men. So when she loses the handkerchief with her mother’s protective magic and the maid bullies her into trading places, she’s helpless, because she would never dare to actually tell the king that she is the real princess – even though she meets the prince in the stables where she’s been sent to sleep in the hay, and it turns out he’s really shy and stammer-y, too, and terrified of this “princess” he’s supposed to marry (because he can tell she’s a bully, and not very refined and ladylike to boot). Now the two of them, the princess and prince, have become really good friends (aka fallen in love), but she can’t say anything about her predicament because the wicked maid has put a spell on her. And then of course there’s Curdie, the gooseherd boy, who wants to pull out her hair because it’s so pretty and golden, and it’s the princess’ friendship with the prince (who, maybe, she doesn’t know is the prince, and just thinks is a nobleman?) which gives her the courage to stand up to Curdie and learn to not let herself be bullied. So when the king finally goes and hears her talking to her dead horse’s head under the bridge, which busts everything wide open, she’s actually got the courage to speak up and let the king know what really happened, and the ensuing happily-ever-after with her marrying the prince is really based on her learning to stand up for herself and have the courage to be who she really is.

There, that’s my outline – or a outline, anyway. It might not be good enough for a contest entry, but now I’ll have to go and actually write that book sometime.

Meanwhile, go and hop over to Creativindie’s site and have a look around (that’s his whole purpose for putting on these contests, to get exposure for his site). I’d love to go on one of those retreats, but if I can’t, I’ll just have to imagine I’m there, dream myself into the castle. I am, after all, a storysmith, mental images come easily.

Life, the Universe, and a Writing Retreat. Here’s hoping.

 

Then and Now: Thirty Years

“5 August 1986: I have got the feeling that I fall in love with another place… – it’s Vancouver!” Thus the start of my journal entry from that momentous day, the first I spent in Canada. Yes, I wrote it in English, even though I hadn’t quite figured out the use of the gerund. It was the summer between Grades 12 and 13, and my aunt had brought me on a trip to visit family in Vancouver .

I still remember the feeling of waking up in that little house in East Vancouver with its slide-up windows (very strange for a German used to inward-swinging casements) and hearing people walk by on the street, talking in English – “Mrmlmrmlmrml,” that soft purring that to German ears sounds like the speaker is talking around a wad of chewing gum.


It was the most magical holiday, and I loved every minute of it. Loved it so much, I came back the following year, and the rest, as they say, is history. Actually, that summer of ’86 is history, too. And in honour of said historical occasion, I made a point of going back to Vancouver this August and visiting some of the same places we’d gone to “back then”.


As I only just realised this year, August of ’86 was the ideal time to come to Vancouver for the first time. It was Expo 86, the World’s Fair on Transportation and Communication, and Vancouver had been polished to within an inch of its life. All sorts of new buildings and infrastructure were put up just for the occasion – places that have since become defining landmarks for Vancouver. Science World (built as Expo Centre), Canada Place with its white sails, the SkyTrain, the Sun Yat-Sen Garden in Chinatown… all of them opened in ’86.


And then there was Lighthouse Park, Downtown (Skyscrapers! Pretty cool for a girl from a Bavarian mountain village), the Pacific Ocean, Granville Island, a day trip on the ferry to Vancouver Island… plus a couple of road trips into the Interior, one of which led us out here to the Okanagan, where, rather prophetically, I ate my first peach-fresh-from-the-tree (bliss!) and acquired my first Okanagan sunburn/tan.


We spent a whole month in Canada – a month of almost unrelenting sunshine. And when my aunt and I climbed back onto that airplane on September 4th, suitcases laden with Canadian souvenirs (amongst other things I took back a muffin tin and corresponding cookbook, a Lazy Susan, a jar of homemade peach jam, Chinese tea candies, and a hoodie with a Snoopy on the back), I left behind a piece of me. A piece that I had to come back to retrieve the following year – unsuccessfully, I might add; that time I simply got stuck for good.


So this year on August 5th (it just happened to be that very day), I once again took a trip to Vancouver. Canada Place (I thought it was very nice of them to put up “30 Years” celebratory banners just for me), Science World, Chinatown, the SkyTrain, Peace Arch Park (the border crossing to the US – I managed to lock myself out of my car in the parking lot), the Pacific Ocean, Granville Island… And then last weekend I went on another quick jaunt down there for a couple of days, and went on the SkyTrain to Downtown Vancouver, to the Art Gallery and Robson Square. And drove back across the mountains, on my own that time – exactly thirty years after I had first been through there in my uncle’s car – back to my family, my own house and my Canadian life.

Life, the Universe, and O Canada… It’s been a good thirty years.IMG_20160826_121150664_crop

Louis

The day Johnny died, I saw on Facebook a picture of a dog with a caption that said something like: “When I die, please don’t say ‘I’ll never have another dog.’ Honour my life by saving another.” Now, replace “dog” with “cat”, and you have a principle we’ve lived by for quite some years already. So a couple of weeks ago, we betook ourselves to the SPCA, and came home with – drumroll please – LOUIS!IMG_20160821_161809232

Ain’t he adorable? Of course he is; he’s a kitten – they’re the very definition of cuteness. And this one certainly lives up to the expectations placed on him.

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Louis in front of his house (the first few days he liked to sleep in the upstairs bedroom)

His name was suggested by the Youngest Offspring, who coughed up the cash for the “adoption fee” (which is really the cost of having the critter neutered). He thought it would be fun to name the cat after a Canadian historical figure, and the first one that sprang to mind was Louis Riel (if you don’t know who that is, you can educate yourself here). Also, we have a long-standing custom of naming our cats after royalty, and there’s certainly plenty of King Louises to choose from. My personal favourite is Louis XIV, because, bombastic and megalomaniac, which just seems to suit a small, fuzzy ginger kitten.

IMG_20160819_095010032So a couple of days ago we took Louis (the kitten, not the king) to the vet to, umm, be turned into an It (is he a eunucat now?). When we picked him up, the vet said we should try to keep him (it) quiet for about a week, but she said it with a chuckle – she’s acquainted with kittens, after all. And sure enough, Louis didn’t get the memo – within minutes of bringing him home, he was doing his psycho-kitten act, racing around, jumping on and off furniture, attacking anything that moves or doesn’t…

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We are not amused.

He’s wormed his way into our hearts quite thoroughly, this little guy. The whole family loves him – well, the whole family with the exception of Cleo, our feline lady, whose black aristocratic nose has once again been put out of joint by the presence of a little pest who keeps trying to attack her and won’t be deterred by hisses. Too-bad-so-sad for her; Louis is here to stay.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and Louis. Now where did the critter get to again?

World Photography Day!

Helen Jones says it’s World Photography Day (go follow the link and check out some of her awesome photos). So I figured I’d join in the fun with a few pics, some old, some new, a few that I’d saved for using on my blog, and a few of which I’d already posted their brothers (i.e. another photo of the same scene from a different angle). Enjoy!appebarrelsbreadCoffee Creekgranny glassesRose (3)sunset