Thoughts in progress

I haven’t stopped thinking about Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. I started the book with a view to reading a bit to see how she created so much tension and I got hooked. I couldn't put it down and may even have to read the second book, Catching Fire.

I’m afraid I’m not normally interested in the sci fi/post apocalyptic genre – having said that, I loved Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – and as Carol pointed out in the comments the other day, I also loved Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Blimey, before I know it I’m going to be writing fantasy sci fi, futuristic world stuff. Maybe not.

Anyway what I’ve been thinking about is that it’s all about a creating a believable world isn’t it? And just because my book is set in 20^th and 21^st century Weald of Kent in England it doesn’t mean my book’s setting has to be less believable because it’s real. What was brilliant about Hunger Games is that I totally bought the world. It was a brilliant mixture of classical references and modern with a push to the extreme.

It makes me realize that the setting that’s another thing that’s not right about my work in progress. I’m considering putting the whole thing through the shredder and then sellotaping it back together to see if there’s any improvement.

Thoughts

If you can spare them, please send your positive and healing thoughts this way today.

Thank you.

Taste of my childhood.

My parents live next door to a big field that used to be a cherry orchard in my youth. Every summer a family of travellers (I am fairly sure they were the same family each year though my memory may fail me) would purchase the rights to the fruit. The whole extended family would move down and live in caravans, in time for the fruit to begin ripening.

Of course selling the cherries was the aim, but that wasn’t all there was to the job. As the cherries began to ripen so the birds had to be kept away from eating the fruit and they used several methods for this. One was to have several weasely dogs that ran around the orchard yapping; another was scarecrows and the last device was what I knew as ‘cherry bangers.’ Quite simply this was what sounded like a cross between a shotgun firing and a very loud clap. I’ve no idea how these were set off but they went off all day, every day. Visitors would remonstrate but we hardly heard them any more.

By way of compensation for being next door to what they worried was a nuisance, a large bucket full of cherries would be passed regularly over the hedge for us to consume.

They were lovely people. On the day of my maternal grandmother’s funeral they closed up shop for the day, out of respect. My mother was so touched.

They put a sign on the gate, saying ‘No cheeries today.’

Not in Provence

As a kind of follow up to the hopping story a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be interesting to show what’s been happening in some of the fields in Kent in recent years.

I had heard that lavender was being grown here, but it was kind of theoretical only; I’d never actually seen any until coming down to Kent on the train from London, I passed by an amazing vision. Three or four consecutive fields, stretched out and undulating away from the railway track, were Lavender fields in full bloom. Several of us on the train exclaimed out loud at the shock of seeing such an image from the train. I jotted down in my notebook the name of the station that we went through next so that I could look up where it was with a view to driving out to take some pictures.

Lavender, with all its old lady connotations, has always been one of my favourite smells. Not only has it a divine aroma, but it’s also soporific, and ever since my children were tiny I would drop it on their duvet or pillow to help them sleep.

Husband and I drove out to Castle Farm the day after we got home from Manchester and I talked all the way about where I envisaged us living when we moved back from Thailand. Poor Husband, he had no idea where my fantasy planning had taken me and he had an awful lot of catching up to do.

Every time I look at these pictures I can smell a wonderful whiff of lavender: divine.

The Garden of England

Normally I tell you about life in Bangkok. Today I’ve been driving round, taking pictures and I’m going to tell you about where I'm staying now, coming back here makes me feel I’m a bit in love again.

I grew up in the Weald of Kent. The name derives from the Anglo Saxon for ‘forest’ or ‘wild’ and actually stretches from Hampshire, through Surrey to Kent. I don’t think any of these areas are particularly wild anymore, but it’s very beautiful: Kent itself is known as the Garden of England. Where I live is a farming area, crops mostly but animals too. Living in Bangkok, I miss a lot of the landscape but the oast houses are among my favourite part of the landscape and I have a desperate hankering to live in one.

Oast houses are farm buildings in which hops are processed. Hops have been grown in this area since around the 16th Century – in the last fifty years they have almost disappeared from the landscape although they were grown all over my immediate locale during my childhood. Hops add bitterness to beer so there are more hops in ‘bitter’ than in ‘lager’ and as lager has gained in popularity so hop farming has declined. The hop fields have almost entirely disappeared here now, which I think is a tragedy, but we are left with these amazing buildings most of which have been converted into homes. You really can't drive 3/4 of a mile without seeing one in the distance or just over the hedgerow.

Hop bines grow up to five feet, up coir string supported by permanent poles and wires. They’re harvested in September in a 6 week period, and traditionally casual workers from London’s East End would bring the family down for a holiday in Kent to pick the hops. They are picked and dried out in the oasts – they build a fire at the bottom on the building, spread out the hops on a grid and the white top – the cowl – turned in the wind to circulate the air.