More than Writers

  Last month I wrote about refining my draft - shaping and sculpting it to as near perfection as possible. It was great to receive comments back - but with upgrading my technology I had somehow lost the ability to reply to those comments. So thank you for all the other metaphors, which seemed rather more apt than my own. I ended that blog with the words ‘Our work is done!’  How strong, how confident - how very, very wrong! Of course, there is great joy in writing for itself. Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird, says, ‘Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.’ But in case I gave anyone the idea that it was only about writing the book or article, poem or prose, I must qualify the statement ‘Our work is done’ on several major points.  Our glorious, finished piece of work needs a home. Here is where the scribbling vicar has an advantage - he or she will know that their wonderful spiritual masterpiece has a place to go. When they speak it out on a Sunday it h...

Yesterday afternoon, I took a photo from a high point in Claremont Landscaped Gardens, Surrey. From where I stood I looked down at the rolling lawn shaped into an outdoor amphitheatre, to the lake beyond. Beautiful man-shaped gardens, once used as a playground for the child who was to become Queen Victoria now stretched before me, looking perfect. It hadn’t been quite so perfect reaching the viewpoint - a little muddy and quite a steep walk uphill for someone who lives in Norfolk, where low hills rise gracefully and gradually. After taking the photo, walking down revealed an area that needed work, where bushes and trees had been cut down and the area cordoned off, encircling the place to be replanted. Passing this, I followed a walk through tall pines in the wooded area. A stroll around the lake revealed more detail than the vista from the viewpoint: a variety of ducks on shimmering water, a large black swan, geese overhead, a grotto on the bank and an island.  I thought about the ...

If anyone else here is as old (or as lacking in discernment in viewing as me), you may remember a terrible Australian soap opera called Sons and Daughters. The acting was pretty amateur, though it fared better production-wise than its ratings rival The Young Doctors. There, the lighting guy was clearly a keen, eager-to-impress kind of chap, making sure he held the rig so close to the actors that it glared off their shiny foreheads and made their skin look not just white but positively iridescent. Anyway, back to Sons and Daughters. After an interminably long run, time was finally called on the show and I – naturally – tuned into the last ever episode. Within the allotted thirty minutes, every single character had their story-line neatly tied up, every crisis was either averted or resolved, every relationship placed on solid ground. No question was left unanswered (except “why am I watching this drivel?”) and the half dozen loyal followers of the show could rest easy, knowing all was we...