8. Week 8

Fuelled by Lemsip

I’ve not got much to say this week, so I’ll hopefully keep this short and sweet.

The flu is now gone and I’ve emptied the house of Lemsip and honey. I’ve spent the week slowly catching up and getting back into normal routines. At the moment I feel that this list has paused. And then I remember there is something in the diary for next weekend. Winter lights are booked for end of the month and a knife skills course now planned for January. So things are going to happen. It’s a good feeling.

I’ve read another book from the shelf - Even Dogs In The Wild by Ian Rankin. An author I fell into during one of the lockdowns as I watched him speak at one of the numerous literary festivals that were streamed online.

As part of my teaching role and I talk about creativity and the creative process. Hearing Ian Rankin describe how he formulated ideas and how they then became books interested me. I’d never read any of his books so I decided to start at the beginning of the Rebus novels. I’ve now got four left to go and a book of short stories.

There are clear defining points with his writing where it gets better, and then even better still and the pages really start to turn. Here is an author who has worked at the craft of writing, of storytelling. He has put in the hours. I’ve always thought that Rebus would have made such a good TV series. He’s certainly not a one-dimensional character but has a darker side that skirts the edges of the law like so many good TV detectives. There have been a couple of dramatisations but none that have stuck.

The 600+ page library book I referred to last week, is now finished and returned to the library. The Bee Sting by Paul Murphy - which didn’t win the Booker Prize, but was deservedly shortlisted (I’ve not read the winning novel yet so can’t judge the judges decision). The Bee Sting is a heft of a book that weaves around four characters from the same family. It was a slow read for me until the end when it races to the finale. The needing to read it slowly reminded me a little of Donna Tartt. Murphy’s paragraphs are shorter though and the story moves with a more consistent pace. The characters are slowly revealed to us, their back story uncovered so any judgements made on their actions becomes unravled. No more said on that as I don’t want to reveal spoilers. This passage stuck out for me.

“When he looks out the window Dickie sees the clothes he wore in the woods fluttering in the wind, along with what must be last night's bed-sheets. The colours are so bright in the garden, in the woods, and the country beyond; and the faces of his wife and son too come to him with a fullness and definition he has not noticed in them before. Everything seems radiant with itself, and at the same time distant somehow, as if it were receding from him - moving away in time, while he stays where he is. This must be what it feels like to be dying, he thinks; the world remains around you, like a lover who does not want to hurt you by leav-ing, but in spirit it's already gone, taking with it the meaning of everything you shared. In truth it is already transforming into a future you will never be part of; and you realize only then that it has been transforming all of this time, throughout your whole life, and you with it; and that, in fact, is life, though you never knew, and now it is over.”

The Bee Sting by Paul Murphy