I am delighted that the beautiful wordsmith, Ian Thomson is sharing, in his own words, his Happy Place.
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everyone else, I can’t wait to get away - to Provence, Bavaria, Tuscany -
wherever. Not that this green and pleasant land isn’t a chequerboard of
historic cities, churches and cathedrals and beautiful rivers, woods and
mountains, cliffs and beaches. But the wanderlust is strong.
The philosopher and mathematician, Blaise
Pascal claimed that: ‘All of humanity's problems stem from man's
inability to sit quietly in a room alone.’ Well, I can’t offer to cure all
human ills because my happy place is not a room but the garden.
As soon as the sun lends a little warmth to the air, even though the tree branches are still bare of leaves, I’m out there. And I will be out there, even when the leaves are falling around me in October. It is my dining room, my sitting room, my summer office. As spring advances, you can almost see the fat tree buds bursting and unfurling: branches that were bare in the morning are sporting fresh green leaves by dusk.
I love working out there in the summer.
Bees are busy in the lavender and the golden rod in front of me; the hypericum
beside me is ablaze with yellow blossom; butterflies dance over the lawn, which
slopes down to a hedge, beyond which is a beautiful public park. Beyond that is
the other side of the valley and open countryside.
Birds visit the feeders: goldfinches,
chaffinches, blue tits, coal tits, robins and sparrows; magpies and jays visit
the garden trees, blackbirds make little runs across the lawn, stop suddenly
lifting their tail feathers, and then run on again. Squirrels chase each other
across the grass and scrabble up into the trees.
Occasionally a breeze sighs in the
thick-leaved sycamores.
The cathedral bells chime the hour.
Plato, the grey cat, is
on patrol. He pads along the terrace with a patrician air. He pauses, eyes me
with disdain, and slinks on past the table, and sits for a while, ears
twitching, looking out over the lawn and the arboretum in a proprietary kind of
way. Then, with a contemptuous backward glance, he pours himself through a
narrow gap in the fence, and disappears.
In the summer of 2017, I was sitting at
the table early one June evening with my laptop open in front of me. I had
recently published my first novel and was beginning to think that that was it.
I was a one trick pony; I didn’t have a second novel in me.
I had brought a martini out with me, some
olives and a few savoury biscuits. I’d dropped one without noticing and in a
little while I become fascinated by a young male blackbird making little stabs
at the crumbs and getting closer and closer to the table. At the same time, I
noticed Plato crouching in a nearby flowerbed with eyes narrowed, intent on the
bird.
This little scenario got me started. All
writers know the horror of that first blank page, but soon words were crossing
the screen from left to right. Plato became Aristotle and the little blackbird
became my muse. You can find them in the second chapter of Humphrey &
Jack.
If, as certain miserable philosophers
maintain, happiness is beyond human attainment, there is at least contentment,
and the garden is where I am most often, most deeply, content.
You can see ALL Ian's award winning books at
Hugs
1 comment:
Beautiful! Very lovely space. Thank you for sharing!
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