…And so, following on from my previous post, it’s time (at last!) to answer Aubrey’s questions:
Why did you start blogging?
It all began when Himadri started his excellent blog, The Argumentative Old Git, and invited me to drop by to continue our old habit of bookish discussion on the interweb. As chance would have it, I’d been tentatively mulling over the idea of starting my own blog (as a place to gather my loose, floating thoughts about literature and nature, rather than letting them drift into festering or forgetting) – and Himadri encouraged me to give it a go (thank you, Himadri!)
At that time, lots of vague motivations were swirling around in my head – and I don’t think they really started to cohere until I’d actually been writing Bookish Nature for a while. But I know that, from the beginning, what pushed me most to begin wittering away on the internet, was my firm belief in the vital importance (in Life, living and flourishing) of great literature, story and the imagination; and of deeper connection to the rest of nature.
These things, it seems to me, are keys to a central and crucial doorway – and, in my own small way, I wanted to do my bit to help keep that door open in a world which, so often, seems turned away from its threshold. I’m passionate about this stuff – and I guess I hoped that I could give back to what inspires me.
Starting a blog was also a chance to get back to writing again – and to hold on to something in me that circumstances threatened to overwhelm. My notebooks and pens had been gathering dust for far too long. I’m a very bad blogger – constantly struggling to catch up with the posts teeming in my head, and with all the comments I’d love to leave on the blogs I read and admire. Time and energy often runs out too soon. But it’s been brilliant to discover so many other bloggers who share my passions – and to learn from, and be inspired by, what they write.
Do you find that you usually prefer the book or movie version?
The book – it’s like someone once said about the radio: ‘the pictures are better!’
With the book there is more time, more depth, greater immersion in perspective, more of a journey into the characters’ minds; a closer seeing through their eyes.
And the characters always look how you think they should!
There are times though, when a film has added a priceless cultural layer to the experience of the book (e.g. David Lean’s Great Expectations). And, because a film is a world and a creation in its own right – when it is done well, it stands on its own reputation, and doesn’t need to balance on the shoulders of the book. Then, it becomes possible to forgive it any deviations from the novel, if it goes its own filmic way from time to time…
Are you wearing jewellery now? Bonus points if a parure is involved.
Alas, I cannot claim the bonus points – and must display my ignorance (I had to look up what a parure is!) But, Yes! I love jewellery. I don’t have masses of it, but what I do have I treasure because each piece holds its own story and significance; myriad associations bound up in the twists and turns of its patterns, and in the lustre of its colours. I’m wearing a necklace that is my most treasured favourite, because my daughter chose it as a birthday gift for me when she was just six years old. It’s very, very lovely; a Celtic design in silver (interlacing Celtic knots) set with pieces of amber.
She bought it in her favourite shop at the time – a fossil shop that also sold jewellery. She was mad on collecting fossils at that age (we were convinced she was going to become a palaeontologist!) She would spend every last bit of her pocket money on fossils (ammonites, arthropods, shark’s teeth, you name it) and that year, we booked a holiday cottage near Lyme Regis in Dorset, so that she could scour the beach, pretending to be Mary Anning!
Remarkable Creatures (published by Harper Collins) – Tracy Chevalier’s novel about Mary Anning – a remarkable woman and pioneering 19th century palaeontologist from Lyme Regis in Dorset.
Name five places you would never want to visit again.
If I’ve had a bad experience of a place, it’s usually been due to the time or events, rather than a fundamental fault with the location. A case of bad associations! I can’t really think of anywhere that, intrinsically in itself, has been so hideous I’d never return… But I can think of a few places, at specific times, which I would never want to experience again:
1) The secondary modern school I attended in the 1970s/early 1980s. It had some highlights – but I’m glad it’s over!
2) Blackpool, June 1985. I felt so ill after that nightmarish ride on the giant, gyrating spider machine (torture chamber). Pleasure Beach it wasn’t!
3) My Theatre Studies ‘A’ Level audition at the local further education college. Excruciating! I mangled Lady Anne’s speech in Richard III: ‘Set down, set down your honourable load…’ Miraculously, I was accepted on the course (the head of the drama department was a kind soul – he mumbled something about potential, and let me in!) After that, the college became associated with tons of happy memories – so, in real time, I’d actually love to go back there again.
4) Dover in the early 1990s. The tops of the famous white cliffs are lovely (lots of butterflies and wildflowers) – and the castle is forbidding and impressive. But the job that took me to Dover turned out to be an unhappy experience… and the town, at that time, generally wore a gloomy and depressing air.
5) The village donkey derby, around 1980 (when I was a very easily embarrassed teenager, and it seemed that everyone who lived within a five mile radius was present). Let’s just say, I started the race seated on the donkey…!
Ocean or lake?
Ocean – mermaids, tall ships, pirates, the salty spray; the wind caught in the roll of the waves, sand between my toes, whales, dolphins – and white horses chasing the dreams of Poseidon… I love to stand looking out to that wide and wild horizon… and to gaze into sun-warmed rock pools, where beadlet anemones and hermit crabs play out the dramas of a whole other world…
(But… lakes have a big attraction too – mysterious, mirror-still, sometimes the keepers of tantalising treasure islands, or a hidden lady waiting to reveal a magic sword. Swans nesting close to the reeds, kingfishers glinting sapphire, dragonflies clicking their wings on a drowsy summer’s day…)
What can I say? I’m a Piscean… I love the water…
What is the first book you couldn’t live without?
Night of the Red Horse by Patricia Leitch.
It spoke to me as if it already knew me, and became a kind of talisman in my reading life; a touchstone from which I travelled into ever widening horizons of the written word. I read it when I was about ten or eleven years old – and the ‘Jinny at Finmory’ series of books, by the wonderful Patricia Leitch, was an absolute embodiment of my fantasy at that time. (Jinny Manders – an imaginative, misfit girl who, like me, goes to an ordinary school, has an ordinary life – is a stranger to the world and psyche of Pony Club and gymkhanas – but who draws horses all day, and dreams of her own horse – is handed a fate that takes her to live in the wilds of Scotland – saving, along the way, a beautiful and spirited Arab mare cruelly trapped in a life at the circus, who becomes both the challenge of Jinny’s life – and the soul-friend of her growing up years).
Night of the Red Horse was my favourite in the series. It had mystery, archaeology, a hint of myth and magic, Epona and the ancient Celts, worlds of time in overlap and collide, a fiery horse of legend painted on the attic wall at Finmory House (a painting which seemed to come to life – urgent with some disturbing and mysterious message) – and it had the stunning west coast of Scotland, eagles in the sky, white-sand beaches, mountains and purple heather moors; a whole story and landscape of deeply resonating and enthralling ingredients – the perfect, kindred recipe to most inspire the mix that was me.
Are you one of those bloggers that believe that people resemble their icons? Do you, for instance, think that I am wearing a periwig and holding a star?
Aubrey – that’s exactly how I imagine you (now with added parure!) So, I guess the answer has to be yes. Though, it does depend… Often, there is something about an icon that suggests an aspect of the blogger’s personality – and which sparks a vague mental picture of what they may look like. Other times, it might hold no clue at all. Alas, I look nothing like a beautiful blue butterfly!
If you were alive in 1902 would you be tempted to ride in one of those new car-things, or would you prefer to continue driving your four-in-hand?
It would have to be total loyalty to the four-in-hand! No doubt, I would have been one of those types deeply resistant to (and very indignant about) the usurpation of the Horse. I would have gathered my lovely quartet of carriage horses (all greys, resplendent in scarlet nosebands), harnessed them to the ageing barouche – and held up the traffic along the lanes for decades into the new century!
Though, secretly, I would probably have accepted the odd Sunday afternoon jaunt in a daffodil-yellow motor car, driven by some bright-young-thing nephew up from Town (just to see for myself what all that dizzying nonsense was about…)
Which actor has provided you with your favourite rendition of Sherlock Holmes?
Well, until recently, the answer would have been, without hesitation, Jeremy Brett. But I think Benedict Cumberbatch may have stolen the crown… or, at least, now wears it on a time-share basis with Jeremy, whilst I waver between the two.
You’re getting dressed for work. You open your closet and find your clothes are not of this decade. Are you happy about this? What decade do you hope is represented?
I would be happy about that! Very exciting!
Having said in my previous post that I’m not that bothered about foot wear – I remember that, when I was at primary school, I begged my mum to let me have a pair of bright yellow, patent leather, knee-length platform boots. I’d seen them pictured in a clothes catalogue. She told me in no uncertain terms (and quite rightly at the time) that they were totally unsuitable; the platform soles were far too high…
So, I would be delighted if the clothes in the closet were from the 1970s – provided they included that pair of yellow platforms. I’d put up with a return to the huge flares, cheesecloth blouses, home-knitted ponchos and floppy hats for a chance – at last – to wear those boots!
However, if elegance and style were essentials that day, I’d be very happy to find an array of outfits from the 1920s in my wardrobe. I’ve always wanted to wear a cloche hat and a handkerchief skirt!
Have you ever mixed a cocktail – for either yourself or others? And if you have, can you mix a tall Bloody Mary – now? All this writing and thinking has made Aubrey thirsty.
Never mixed a cocktail in my life. Does a Cinzano and lemonade count? With a glace cherry on a stick? (Yes, yes, I know… I have such class…!)
And now for the bloggers to whom I would like to give the Liebster Award:
(Please see my previous post for details of what the Liebster Award entails)
I understand that the award should go to up-and-coming blogs that have fewer than 300 followers. To me, that number seems more like “well-established” than “up-and-coming” – an amazing number of followers to have achieved! But, then, I remember the days when I was happy just talking to myself (and Himadri – bless him!) here on Bookish Nature – and 10 followers seemed like an impossibly high aspiration! Some of you on the list may have more than 300 followers (I wasn’t always sure as to the numbers) – in which case, I hope you don’t mind this award winging its way up there towards the stratosphere!
I think that some of the bloggers I’ve nominated may already have received this award in the past – (Himadri? Diana? Gareth?) and so may not wish to participate again. Also, I’m aware that some folk don’t like to take part in blog awards due to time constraints etc. (I would have nominated Sonya Chasey’s blog, but I know for sure that time is a precluding factor for her) – so, I just want everyone on the list to know that I’ve included your blogs in acknowledgement of how much I admire and enjoy them – and am taking it as a chance to flag up what great corners of the internet there are out there to visit and to discover… There is absolutely no obligation to accept or participate. Please take these nominations as a sign of my appreciation (a kind of honorary Liebster Award, if you’d prefer).
However, should you wish to throw yourself completely into the Liebster pond, my eleven questions to you are:
1) Why did you start blogging?
2) You’re going on an once-in-a-lifetime expedition to a far flung part of the planet. Where would you go? And what would be the one luxury item you would pack in your rucksack?
3) If you lived in the same parallel universe as Lyra in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, what animal would your daemon be? Or, put another way, what settled form would you hope it would adopt, and why?
(For those of you who are unfamiliar with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, a daemon can be very loosely described as a physical manifestation of an individual’s inner self/ character/ soul. During childhood, its form is not fixed, and goes through a fluidity of changes every day, according to the fluctuating possibilities of the young mind – e.g. from moth, to kestrel, to dolphin, to leopard etc. Eventually, as a person reaches adulthood, the daemon takes on a settled form; the animal form which most closely suggests the essence of that person’s character…)
4) If you had the chance to step into a painting, and to spend a magical hour wandering its world, which painting would you choose? Maybe it would be Constable’s Hay Wain? Van Gogh’s Starry Night? Or, perhaps you’d like to join in with Edvard Munch’s Scream?? Or – much more light-heartedly – maybe you’d prefer to go trip-trapping over Monet’s bridge? The possibilities are endless. It’s your choice…
5) The Doctor has invited you to time travel with him on board the Tardis. Which period in history would you most like to visit and why?
6) If Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Will Shakespeare were alive today and were regular tweeters, I’d definitely be persuaded to join Twitter! Is there anyone from pre-internet days who, if they were alive today, you would love to see dazzle us daily with tweets of sheer brilliance and delight? Or are you glad they never had to suffer the tyranny of 140 characters?
7) Which three books and three pieces of music would you take with you to a desert island?
8) Out of all the species of wild animals or birds you have yet to see, which one would you most like to encounter?
9) Which of the following would most closely correspond to your natural habitat?
a) Out on the moors with Heathcliff.
b) In the Forest with Robin Hood.
c) Out at sea with Long John Silver.
d) Cosy by the fireside with a Pickwickian gathering of genial folk, sharing a bottle of your favourite tipple.
e) The bookish calm of a country house study – in mutual retreat with Mr Bennet.
f) Striding across the meadows with Elizabeth Bennet, a healthy glow in your cheeks and mud caking your boots.
g) In the Attic with Jo from Little Women, scribbling stories and dreaming of adventure.
h) Absorbed in the life of the city streets – in the company of a fictional detective of your choice.
i) Roaming Manderley – and the windswept Cornish cliffs – with the second Mrs de Winter.
j) Wandering alongside William and Dorothy Wordsworth, pacing out poetical rhythms on the Cumbrian fells, and waxing lyrical about wild daffodils.
k) In a cave with Gollum.
l) Hey, Mel – I’m an incredibly complicated human being – a mix of all the above holds true. It depends on my mood…
m) I wouldn’t be seen dead with any of them – Bah! Humbug!
10) Where would you rather live and why:
Toad Hall
Bag End
Green Knowe
Little House on the Prairie
Green Gables
Kirrin Island
221B Baker Street
11) If you had to go on a long journey with a fictional character, who would you choose? And what form of transport would you take – ship, hot air balloon, train, canal boat, motorbike, bicycle, gondola, skateboard, horse drawn gypsy caravan? Space ship?
(Just out of interest, I asked my daughter that last question. Her answer: Legolas on a gondola!)
Happy blogging, all!
Bookish Nature 