Postaday2013 - Sounds like wish

17 June, 2013

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Flow

I have this photo which is entirely suitable for Ailsa’s challenge this week. She asks us to open the floodgates and let the creativity flow. Well, this photo is not a product of my creativity but of my treasure-hunting. I found it in my father’s WWII album, where it’s entitled ‘Weir in Nile’. The water is certainly flowing!

Often when I want to identify a location in one of these old photos, I can search the web for similar photos, which usually is a sure way of finding details about my image. This time, however, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve researched the dams,weirs and barrages on the Nile River in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia and not found any image that resembles mine. It’s possible that this dam has been rebuilt since the 1940s and now looks completely different. Click twice to enlarge the image.

If anyone out there is an expert on old Nile dams, and if you know what this one was called, please tell me. I’ll be very grateful!

13 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 54!!!

No eggs! No eggs!! Thousand thunders, man, what do you mean by no eggs?

Saint Joan, Bernard Shaw

*****

My edition of this play has a 41-page preface written in 1924 by Ayot St Lawrence which also has a great first line:
“Joan of Arc, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonized in 1920.”

What a great résumé.

*****

Thank you to all of you who’ve read any of these 54 opening lines. Perhaps you’ve been encouraged to write the first line of your own novel, poem or play. As a bonus, I can’t help adding the line that many of us think of immediately when asked for a great opener:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Paul Clifford, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

12 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 53

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

*****

A book I’ve begun but not yet finished. However, since this is about opening lines, I submit this one as a favourite. I recently tried to describe ‘afternoon tea’ to an older French woman who thought eating mid-afternoon was an odd thing. When I turned up at her apartment the next afternoon with pastries and asking for her to put the kettle on, she chose not to eat or drink anything and simply sat watching me enjoy what Henry James and I call an agreeable hour.

10 June, 201327 August, 2018

54 great opening lines: 51

Queen Maritorne was the terror of greedy thieving children: she reigned from the attic, where lines of pears and apples ripened, to the vat from which the wine was drawn; she was also the punishment for drunks, and without warning would leap out from the cask tapped by the dishonest valet.

Queen Maritorne, Jean Lorrain (Translated by me)

*****

This is the opener of a fairy tale I translated in France. I felt like I’d met her before, this queen who punishes overeaters and overdrinkers.

7 June, 2013

Same subject, different time: East of Málaga's photo challenge

Marianne of East of Málaga had the idea of finding a subject worthy of an impressionist painter’s interest. For me it’s this view, one I reckon Monet would have painted if he had been on my balcony. And he could very well have stood on it – the building has been there for a century or two!

Two views from the same spot; different days, different hours:

Marianne proposes we recommend two blogs worth commenting on. I found these two which show amazing wedding photography though neither of the bloggers is a professional photographer (yet); have a look at what’s possible when you love what you do:

Ramblings: http://monahoward.com/2013/05/31/a-story-of-love-and-courage/

therebeccapapers: http://therebeccapapers.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/texture-and-light/

5 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 50

I am to break into the conversation
With a word that tastes like snow to say;
I am to interrupt the contemplation
Of the familiar headlines of the day –
Horses, divorces, politics, murders –
With a word cold to hear or look at,
Colder to speak.

The Fire on the Snow, Douglas Stewart

*****

A play written for radio: the story of Captain Robert Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, reaching it only to find that Amundsen had beaten him.

4 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 49

Following the tragic events of February, 1937, when the Stinson Airliner VH-UHH crashed in the McPherson Range, I have received many oft-repeated and apparently sincere requests to write the story of that memorable rescue in which it was my good fortune to play the principal part.

Green Mountains, Bernard O’Reilly

*****

A rescue story that has to be read to be believed. Ten days after their plane had crashed into rainforest in a cyclone, two men were still alive. Bernard O’Reilly was their rescuer, and fortunately for us he was a great writer. He was also renowned in south-east Queensland, Australia, as part of the first generation of the family that built O’Reilly’s Guesthouse in 1926 in the Lamington National Park, now run by the third generation.

3 June, 2013

54 great opening lines: 48

Wine talks. Everyone knows that. Look around you.

Blackberry Wine, Joanne Harris

*****

I bought this book at a charity shop just before leaving for France, and read it during the first three weeks. I was staying in a small untouristy village and when I found the story turning on another small French village and its future – draw tourists or perish – I started to live in the book, unable to put it down. I finished it at 4am on the morning of my last day, reading it to the end to cure my insomnia. (It didn’t.) My bag was already packed, already too full, so I placed the book on the shelves with several other English language novels; it seems this flat is only ever let to English speakers.

I liked Harris’s tricky point of view – it’s the bottle of wine that narrates the story.

25 May, 2013

Ailsa's travel photography challenge: Pathways

I’ve walked a million miles in the past few weeks, many of them on sealed surfaces and others on dirt paths. The following photos were taken on two difficult climbs. The first two show the path up to the Abbey of St Martin of Canigou in France; I walked up the 3 kms and down again which was steep but not TOO harsh because the path is sealed. But some older people in our group took the optional jeep ride which apparently is not always better; some said they had vertigo looking at the edges.

Jeep doing 3-point turn on a hairpin bend; straight drop down at the edge. — Jeep doing 3-point turn on a hairpin bend; at the edge, straight drop down!

Abbey of St Martin of Canigou at the top of the 3 km path — L’Abbaye de Saint Martin du Canigou at the top of the 3 km path (check out the cloud!)

This next photo was taken from half-way up a steep dirt track on my way to Cap Béar, though I never got there. When I reached this point my heart was pounding and I was breathing heavily, absolutely alone and a wee bit scared, so I made the decision to descend. The track is grazed out of the hillside and sometimes supported by improvised stone steps. Very steep but not frightening for genuine hikers. And on the subject of pathways, from up on the hill there’s a great view of the pathway to the lighthouse, that is, the jetty.

Half way up the hill on the path to Cap Béar, France; looking over the jetty and lighthouse — Half-way up the hill on the path to Cap Béar, France; looking over the jetty and lighthouse

This post was inspired by Ailsa’s Pathways: have a look at the awesome paths she has trod.

17 May, 2013

Ailsa's travel photography challenge: The four elements

The four elements: earth, water, air, fire; that’s Ailsa’s photo challenge this week.

The photos below are from the Catalan coast, north and south of the French-Spanish border.

EARTH

House built onto rock, Port-Vendres, France

Sometimes the French completely tame and reshape nature, sometimes they work around it, acknowledging its beauty. Many buildings in this region are built on rock, incorporating it into the external and even internal walls. Why remove rock when it adds to the visual appeal?

WATER

Students casting stones into the sea, Cadaqués, Spain

Yesterday afternoon in Cadaqués on the north-east coast of Spain, we stopped to have a cup of tea in a café. Outside, students stopped on the beach on their way home after school with the idea of dismantling the rocky beach and casting the stones into the sea, an activity which amused them greatly. I wondered whether they do this every afternoon. This is truly a watery photo because it was drizzling and had been for most of the day.

AIR

Here on the Côte Vermeille it’s OFTEN windy. Squally. Scary at night. I shut the shutters.

FIRE

This afternoon I lit the candle on the right for my family. The little candles that burn in churches every day are strangely warming despite the tall, open, often icy space.