Ava remembered

She remembered now, the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.
The girl who met the boy - who was also a man.
He was always a man.
And if the woman, who was once a girl, who promised she'd never fall in love with another did keep the promise - it wouldn't be because she was stupid or even a martyr.
It would be because she couldn't or it just didn't...

'Ava' her mother called as she walked in the door of the house.
'I must go,' Mat spoke out.

What Ava says next...

'Glad to hear it,' Mat almost reprimanded.
'Not that you read it Mat!' she threw back.
'Well, archery comes first you know and creationism takes up alot of my time,' he smirked knowingly.
'Yeah and I love hearing about your odd obsessions with that obscure topic,' she said with sarcasm.
'Dinosaurs, I'll have you know, have lived on the earth from 230 million to 65 million years ago,' he said smarting.
'Mat, we all believe that God created the animals and isn't that sufficient? We don't need to dig any deeper on that one - no-one's disputing it,' she told him.
'Okay, so, topic change for now,' he paused.
That makes a change, she thought. He was inclined to going on like a train smash, on and on, without a breath and whilst the listener blanked out from verbal overdose and irrelevancy.
'What's the fuel like these days?', he asked.
'What are you talking about - petrol or diesel. I hear it's all fine thanks, apart from the rise in price,' she said.
'No, what's fuelling your story?' he asked directly now.
She looked down at the floor.
He asked a third time.
She shook her head.
'I can't tell of craft secrets,' was her pithy remark.

Continuation of Ava

Of course it was also for them and others.
'I am writing Mat,' she insisted.
She was confident and in a way didn't seem to care anymore, in a healthy and strong way. At 29, she was who she is, and that was, completely put... enough.
She didn't care anymore of what anyone thought, who wasn't beside her and how the summation of others resulted.
She had her own beauty.
She held her own talent.
And forever she would keep going on the treadmill of 'the craft' which she executed with measured alacrity and endurance.
Mother and Father never knew how it would go, when they had her.
Even now, they had her, and still did not know how it would go.
They would look at the photograph of the girl who would grow up to look like her, who, although they didn't know it then, would grow up.
Yes, to grow up.
And more than that, would grow up to be a woman, who would become studious, fall in love, fall out of love, become a writer and travel far.
She was Ava.

Introducing Ava

The eyes - that's how we know.
And that's when I saw him. When I told him things he would laugh and tell of how he loved my imagination - 'an acute art of clarity and dignity,' he would say grinning.
For him I changed pebbles into seashells, words into love, banners to honour, the moon to become the sun until I gave him wings.
I look at the page, the paper is smooth as well as creased.
3 years is not like 60 years.
For some, it has been so. Like the character in one of my favourtie books - the one I randomly picked up at tesco - on Love.

Once upon a time, the girl who liked the boy, who was now a woman, travelled by boat from an island to the English Country. Home.
Now that time had passed by, she stood in the living room. For years Ava had become invisible and here she was at 29. She had changed so much that part of her wanted to laugh hard.
She wore a navy-blue and green striped scarf over her coat - Jack Will's style and true of Surrey outer-wear. Her long fingers were strong from the piano and cased themselves as she unpacked a notebook.
Her close friend remarked, 'Why did you stop?'
'Why did I stop what Mat?' she looked honestly unaware.
'Did you stop writing Ava?' he asked.
Stopped writing - what a remark, she thought. Ava wrote alright, she wrote songs, poetry, fiction, dreamt of characters, wrote in one of eight notebooks and each with their own calling. She wrote articles, printed books - she did it - what she told him she would do years before. In fact Ava read about writing and studied it.
When she was away, she wrote.
When she was here, she wrote.
When she travelled, she wrote.
In the morning and the evening, she wrote. Not 'murder she wrote,' but 'for Love, she wrote.'
For the Love of the Man Upstairs, at first, and then for the Love of him.

Voices Through The Ages

I have a Voice.
I have a Voice - My Very Own Voice.
I have a unique Voice.
I have a Voice of style.
I have a Voice in the wind.
I have a Voice under the pillow.
I have a shouting Voice.
I have a whispering Voice.
I have a Voice that can be heard.
I have a recognisable Voice.
I have a Voice with tone.
I have a Voice of clarity.
I have a poetic Voice.
I have a Voice of Prose.
I have my very own Voice.
Only I can have this Voice.

Writing is a multi-faceted business, and it is one with a seam and a theme to it. At times, we hope, it will be diamond-cut prose. It is multi-faceted because we are so many things, we are poets, diarists, journalistic, travel writers or write whilst we travel, notebookers, bloggists, article writers, short story writers, novel writers and then comes fiction. Something is trying to create itself and so, soon, tomorrow in fact, it will begin...

Everything in Motion

Everything is constantly transforming, metamorphosising, altering, realigning and, most importantly, evolving.

Granny, adopted into our family, calls me on the telephone today to tell me about the 'changes' that occur in her everyday life... 'they fixed the wires in the house for me the other day, and then they were right, and now they are all wrong.' 'You see, nothing ever stays the same,' she says.

She loves living, even at 98.

There are incredible and remarkable living heroines who constantly portray elements of something like 'the art of living.' A once Wimbledon Champion, now residing in her Wonersh home in Surrey, she breathes on. A remarkable woman of determined sorts coupled with a feisty nature too - perhaps.

Everything changes.

Everyone changes.

Some go from masculine, hot-to-trot young bucks into a morass of who knows what.

Others evolve from unknown, backrow, bystander or sitter, as it may be, to the epitome of class. Simply stated, 'a cut above the rest.' And so we live and learn and alter our ways, even at the fresh age of 98.

Bottom Drawer

Guildford high street was teeming over the week-end with every kind of Surrey resident and soon-to-be Christmas shopper. Molton Brown, River Island, Whistles of London, Jack Wills, Laura Ashley, Crew Clothing and Jaeger line the bustiling, cobbled street spilling over with both quiet and clip-clopping feet.
I can recognise a Boden outfit from a mile off and pick up the scent of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle - my absolute favourite - from any passer-by and at the speed of lightening.
This is life in Surrey, you see, don't you see?
The elevated high street lends itself to the most panoramic and picturesque views which are best seen from the top point of the high street and looking in reverse.

Beyond the High Street, what do you keep in your bottom drawer?
I used to keep a so called 'marriage chest' which I eventually emptied out and then I kept a deep drawer full of old manuscripts which I also threw out. I have read of authors who keep a secret manuscript in safe bottom-drawer storage which is too scandalous to let out. Today, I keep nothing in a bottom drawer, apart from sacred old sentimental items, in a trunk, from childhood and other. In a different kind of bottom drawer, kind of like a bottom-drawer-thought, I have some things... like re-invention for 2010. Not Bridget Jones style, oh no, this is more like sophistication, domestication, genuine writer and musician. It's all about becoming that thing and becoming the Dream. Instead of dreaming, you see, it's actually living it.
As in one of the books I really enjoyed, Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, after a long, arduous journey he does reach his goal and fulfil his desire, in the end. And so it must be for all of us.

Women Writers Through The Lens

Surrey life did you say?

It's only 4.30pm and the sky outside is a petrified black colour, raindrops dance across the windowpanes and already the curtains need to be drawn otherwise it's like sitting in a fish bowl with the lights on and everyone can see exactly who is home and how they are at home.

An article titled 'Women writers through the lens', refers to Ruby Ayres who admitted to a newspaper in 1955 that she wrote an average of 20,000 words a day. Enid Blyton could produce a children's book in five days. This is sufficient to put us 'writing gals' to shame alright. It took alot of effort and work to research and write a 2,000 word article for a cyprus magazine - for a certain destination in which I was not living and not all that au fait.

And yet, what is it exactly that is so terribly and wonderfully, all at the same time, enticing about spilling words across a page and inventing characters in some time-gone-by period which we were never a part of, not once, or ever. I'm currently working on a historical fiction novel that perhaps may warrant this sentence.

Surrey, of course, is the perfect place for such writerly habits - what with the weather and the people - there is plently of space, time and opportunity for such antics. Saturday, today, has rained and been pretty bleak, if we were to talk about the weather, which of course we never do. The gardening man has been out there, in that weather, with his usual green raincoat on whilst he works and then left early. He enjoys a hot 'mug' of tea when he works on the week-ends and I don't blame him. Children In Need has been on and it always amazes me how charitable everyone actually is and how much money England manages to raise and for such justifiable and philanthropic causes. We really are able to make a difference when we get together. I was wondering, as I attempt to do this myself, has anyone actually read 'Catch-22 by Joseph Heller', or does everyone in Surrey simply keep it lining the bookshelf. Sometimes rhetoric is a very good thing.