Two R's

Finished reading ‘Land’.  Beautiful story-telling, but not one to read if in any way depressed, other than the fact that you could console yourself that at least you don’t have to live a life like that.  Also finished ‘Travel Light’ by Naomi Mitchison, which will have to re-read as was either too distracted to get it or fell asleep and forgot key details of the story.  Bought it as she lived on the Mull of Kintyre where my father was from.  He used to tell us, in hushed tones, ‘That’s where Naomi Mitchison lives, she’s a writer’.  There was a thrill, feeling such close proximity to a real live person who had real live books published and that they lived near Campbeltown, where every day was like a long, deafening, too still Sunday.  It was like finding out the fairy queen lived there.  I asked him what she had written but he didn’t know, so we walked on in the sandy muffled shush, a million pink-tinged daisies on the way to the beach, trying not to get prickled by the marram grass in the dunes, sensing that frisson of magic in the air of stories being birthed. (Although it may just have been the sleepy peace of the scented machair and Gulf Stream). 

Also finished ‘The Shapeshifter’s Daughter’.  Have a notion for Orkney, a bracing ferry trip.

Started Ray Bradbury’s ‘Dandelion Wine’.  He explains his writing method; “I simply… put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head.  I would then take arms against the word, or for it, and bring on an assortment of characters to weigh the word and show me it’s meaning in my own life.  An hour or two later…a story would be finished…”

The word that came to mind; ‘longing’. 

O’Farrell, M. ‘Land’ 2026 UK Publ. Tinder Press

Mitchison, N ‘Travel Light’ (1952) Publ. Virago 2026

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machair

Magnusson S. ‘The Shapeshifter’s Daughter’. 2025. UK Publ. John Murray

Bradbury, R. ‘Dandelion Wine’ (1957).  Publ. Harper Voyager UK 2008