Morning

Cherry

By HarryC

Mon, 31 Aug 2026
  • 642 reads
22 comments
 

beside my bed

the books unread

 

inside my head

the thoughts undead

 

the words unsaid

 

the words unsaid

 

 

(Image: mine)

Certificate U
Poem
Better or Verse
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by Turlough on

I get you Harry. It's when the thoughts cause such a whirlwind in the head that it becomes impossible to get on with anything.

The whirlwind seems to whirl faster every day but at least I find it comforting to be amongst books, even if I haven't read them.

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks, Turlough. Been a while away. Finally managed to knock my childhood novel into some sort of shape. So it's now the dispiriting round of send-off, rejection, send-off, rejection... frown

I don't read nearly enough. Never have, really. Partly it's because I'm such a slow reader, and I find books intimidating in that respect. I hate to say it, but having the Kobo has sped it up a bit. Not the same as a physical book - but it's reading! But I have piles of books that I keep meaning to get around to. And I keep thinking 'How can you even have the audacity to think you can write when you don't read?' Haha! Too many books, not enough time....

Submitted by Turlough on

I wish you the very best of luck with your novel Harry. The end process you have described has always put me off trying to get anything of mine published. I love writing but I really can’t be bothered with bureaucracy (if that’s the right word), trying to persuade people and the arse-licking that I suspect might be required.

I too am a slow reader, and I have a very short attention span. So if a book hasn’t gripped me by the time I get to the end of the second chapter it goes in the reject box. I also can’t read anything where I can’t believe it really happened, so my range of genres is limited. Consequently if I see a book that I think I’ll like I buy it whether I have the time to read it or not. It’s hard to find English language books in Bulgaria so I tend to do a bit of stockpiling when I’m over in Britain or Ireland, and on recent trips I’ve overdone it a bit.

However, with all that in mind, I’ve often finished reading a book and felt sad that it was over.

Keep us up to date with your novel’s publishing status. I’ll be very interested to know how you get on. And I’ll certainly buy a copy when it hits the shelves.

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks, Turlough. I've had a couple of sniffs with agents in the past, but it's never come to anything. I tend to let that defeat me when I know I shouldn't. But partly, too, it's because I've taken another look at the work and thought it wasn't what I thought it was. It's almost always felt like another mile along the road towards something else that's always seemed too many miles ahead.

My ADHD doesn't help - and the internet has been absolutely disastrous for any sense of 'productivity'. I estimate I've wasted a good part of the last 20 years simply prevaricating by clicking on another vid, going down another rabbit hole. It's why I don't and can't have a smart phone. I think they're hellacious things! And not just for attention spans. I'm the same with reading. Sometimes it's just a few pages. I pick up so few books nowadays that I can stay with. Which is why I return to tried and tested old ones. But then I was once told by a wise person that the only real reading is re-reading. It's true. The same with re-watching old films. It's like when you go to a foreign country for the first time. It's all so different, so dazzling - so many sights, so many things to do. Subsequent visits mean you can focus on the smaller things that you missed first time. I'm currently re-reading a favourite travel book - 'Blue Highways', by William Least Heat-Moon. I first read it 30 years ago, and it was a wonderful experience. This time, though, I see so much that I missed. I'd underlined passages before, and many are still relevant. But I'm finding others that are just as important. Great book if you can still get hold of a copy. I'm also reading Homer's 'Odyssey' for the first time. I should read more fiction. I read hardly any contemporary stuff. I have a friend in the US, though, who's an absolutely gargantuan reader! She consumes books like a whale consumes krill! She often has 10 or so on the go and can usually manage them all in a couple of weeks. And she was telling me that she's had a whole run of getting recommended books from her library (bestsellers, etc) and casting them aside within a few pages. She's either hooked quickly - by the subject, or the style - or it's gone! There are some I've started like that and have persevered with, and have been glad that I did (Cormac McCarthy's Suttree was one - a wonderful book, but really tough at the start). But the older I get, the more impatient I get! Again... too many books. Not enough time!

Submitted by Turlough on

I agree about the re-reading Harry. I’m halfway through the third of four books by Louis de Bernières that I bought in a Stockport charity shop a good while back. Two of them I’d read before. They all contain captivating stories but also snippets of humour and paragraphs of real-life history. Birds Without Wings (probably the only book I’ve ever read three times) is a gem of historical fiction describing Turkey’s experience of World War One, but it also gives Bulgaria’s involvement a mention. Every day I try to take in a little more Balkan history so this book was a good find. I’ve got a massive volume of the history of this region over the past three centuries which I tend to treat as a reference book but one day I’ll get round to reading the whole thing.

For me winter’s the time for reading, and writing. There’s too much to do outside in summer and then in the dark months I don’t feel like going past the door. But as you say, not enough time… despite the fact that I’ve been retired for ten years.

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

That's me too !  A big pile of books next to the bed, which I've brought home from the charity shop.  I feel like Cnut trying to push back the waves sometimes.

But I like them there, I feel they define me somehow. Some people put up pictures or ornaments - I put up books.

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Same here. You can tell a lot about a person by the books on their shelves.

I often go out for walks in the evenings and my eye is often drawn (not in voyeuristic way, mind!) to people's windows if they still have their curtains open. I love seeing cases and shelves of books, pictures everywhere, the sorts of ornaments on display. I don't know if it's just me, though, or a genuine sign of the times - but I often notice completely bare, blank walls... except for a huge TV. Nothing or very little else. I'm all for minimalism. But they might as well be hospital waiting rooms.

Submitted by Turlough on

Kat, I’ve got the books, the pictures and the ornaments. And anywhere that there isn’t one of those, there tends to be a cat.

But doesn’t a big pile of books give such a lovely warm feeling? I’ve even got some very old Bulgarian books that I’ll never be able to read but I feel that this old house deserves them, and vice versa.

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

I've got the books, pictures, ornaments... and the cat, too!

I've got a full 30-volume Encyclopedia Britannica - 1984 vintage, bought as remaindered in 1985 for half-price at £500. I used redundancy money I had when the old nationalised electricity board I worked for prepared for privatisation, and I decided to take the money and run! It's very rarely been used. The article on computers shows something like a glorified adding machine. It's followed me from flat to house to bungalow to bedsit to flat - perhaps a dozen moves since then. It's heavy and it takes up space. But I couldn't part with it now. What's in my brain would probably occupy no more than a quarter of one volume. But I feel more educated just for having it!

Submitted by Turlough on

Many many years ago I worked in the pensions department at the Central Electricity Generating Board in Harrogate, and then the privatised abomination that was National Power in Swindon. I always despised Thatcher but the countless hours of overtime I worked making redundancy payments on her behalf paid for several luxuries my family and I might not otherwise have enjoyed.

She also gave me a few shares in the new company which I immediately sold before they went down in value. We spent the money on a week’s holiday in a static caravan in Berwick-upon-Tweed.  

The last thing I ever did in that job was to calculate and pay out my own redundancy and severance money, a transaction that was ruthlessly checked by a senior manager.

Which electricity board did you work for Harry? Our paths, or circuits, may have crossed.

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

I was with Seeboard - South Eastern. Started out at 19 as a salesman in one of their showrooms. I was so profoundly bad at the job that they eventually shifted me off to the district offices... where I discovered a certain talent for clerical work! Took redundancy when they started amalgamating the offices in 1984. I haven't got a clue how it was 42 years ago. Remember it so clearly. Good times, though -  early '80s. The music! I used to go to nightclubs just to listen to it. Dancing? Sex? It never crossed my mind. 30 or so jobs later, I'm now permanently redundant - and loving every moment!

Submitted by HarryC on

PS I despised Thatcher, too. Still do. Always will.

Submitted by Turlough on

In the early eighties we all used to go to nightclubs just to listen to the music. The dancing and sex all took place in the offices of the electricity board.

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

I rescue old hardback books from the charity shop.  Very often they have an inscription written inside - I guess a hardback book would have been an expensive item and not something a person would have bought for themselves.  I love reading the inscriptions and wondering if the people are still alive and what their relationship was. If they're not in perfect condition (and of course they're not, because they're so old) the offical line is that we throw them away, and I couldn't bear that. 

My other collection of old hardback books are the ones which were left behind on the Queen Mary which my grandfather, a First Class cabin steward, used to bring home.  I guess the people were so wealthy they couldn't be bothered to take them when they disembarked.  They date from the 30's to the 50s.  One I have is a 1938 copy of Rebecca, which I think is a first edition. 

A home isn't a home without loads of books and at least one cat.  smiley

 

Submitted by HarryC on

I can only agree! I've got all the Sherlock Holmes paperbacks I got as a kid when it was the only thing I read. Next to ghost and horror stories. And on that front, I've got three volumes I got in the early '70s - one given new as a Christmas present (Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural) in 1974, and the other two (The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries, and Fifty Great Sea Stories) bought from a secondhand bookshop in Totnes Fore Street when we moved down there. They're both from the '30s. The faux-leather bindings are all split and the pages are brown with age - but they're sitting right there in front of me on the bookshelf, where they've always been.  I've also got the two volumes of William S Baring Gould's 'The Annotated Sherlock Holmes', which I bought new in 1977 for £15 - almost a week's pay then. All the stories and novels, all the illustrations, and copious notes. Published by John Murray. Might be worth a bob or two now.

Submitted by GlosKat on

.. I think you're being very modest.  I've just found you on the Longmarsh Press website, listing your impressive achievements and awards in prose, poems and plays, as well as your 'in the day' novel published in 2014.  Are you rewriting that novel, or is the one you mention above a new book ?  I was going to order it off Longmarsh, but if you're doing a rewrite I'll hang on.

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Well... there's a history about that, and I won't go into it. Let's just say it's something I try to put behind me - and not just for the reasons anyone might imagine. It led to a change in my life that wasn't what I expected. It also led to a broken friendship. But it led to other more positive things, too. Cause and effect! I'm sure there was some greater purpose behind it in that sense. But that book is out-of-print now - and it was only a very small run. I had to do all the donkey-work myself, too, as the publisher did nothing. I actually ended up buying their remaining stock at cost... and giving them away. I'm not doing a complete re-write, no - but it is the blueprint for my current work. I was pleased with it at the time because it was the first time I'd managed to complete something of that length - and there are still many things about it that I stand by. But I realise now that it was trying to be something else. It came from a very dark place in my life, too. As they say... it is what it is... or it was what it was!  What's coming out of it now is on here in an early form under the title 'The Love of the Loveless'. That's been a burden I've been carrying around for about 10 years now - the half-finished novel that felt like it had something going for it. But I couldn't find a way to finish it. It's been in my head that whole time, nagging away. But it was just road-blocked. And I've always taken the detour to something else - the path of least resistance! Part of my make-up! If I don't do it, I can't say it was a failure! I always joke that I never failed a single exam at school. Which is true. Because I didn't take any!  I think the problem was that I came up with the title and was using the title to guide me through. And now I realise that the title was wrong - and changing it has freed things up a bit. Sounds weird... but sometimes something as simple as that can lead to fresh thinking.

Anyway... now that particular bag of smelly fish is back in front of me again, and I've got to open it again and see what's inside. I think I know the way to finish now - I can even 'see' the final scene in it, which echoes the final image in 'In the Day'. I've just got to start working towards it. Raymond Carver summed it up in a poem I re-read recently. A poem all writers will identify with, I think. The hard path through the forest, indeed!

https://aotearoasunrise.blogspot.com/2021/09/tuesday-poem-one-more-by-raymond-carver.html

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks for the cherries! smiley

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Very glad you are posting again! Your "words unsaid" have provoked a great discussion. And that's Brilliant News that you have your fabulous book ready to go!

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Thanks, Di. It was a difficult one to finish. The last part is very sad. But it actually happened. So it had to end that way.

https://www.abctales.com/story/harryc/tom-all-alone-19-i

Submitted by celticman on

18 word poem. 20 000 words commentary. Both fascinating. Books are my thing too. But I'm not sure words are. 

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Haha! Glad someone's keeping the stats!

You're not sure words are? I'd disagree. But I think I know what you mean. Years and years and years of writing them down and all they seem to produce is piles of paper or more space on the hard drive. Ho hum! I have a new approach to my periodic blocks now. I convince myself that the world's going to end soon (doesn't take much convincing sometimes), so no one's going to read them anyway. So I might as well write them just for the hell of it!