3 May 2004
Ideas (again)
Saturday was 1 May, the feast of St Joseph the Worker. I was working, certainly. But I was invited for dinner where I met a journalist who had recently visited Libya.
Before driving to the dinner, I spent some time posting some new pages on the www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk website, including some visitors' lists of favourite books. One contributor, the scientist Will Stewart, gave me a list that included The Physics of Blown Sand, a non-fiction book written by Ralph A. Bagnold.
During World War II, Bagnold founded the British Army's Long Range Desert Group. For Europeans, he was a pioneer of desert exploration and in 1932 made the first recorded east-west crossing of the Libyan Desert.
The Physics of Blown Sand was published in 1941 and has been used by NASA in studying sand dunes on Mars. The journalist I met at dinner hadn't heard of the book. I suspected I might not find a link for it within our Bookfriends pages. But I was wrong. Another contributor, Alistair Potter, had already mentioned this odd classic.
This made me think about story ideas and how they are defined by your point of view.
Last week, in a waiting room, I browsed the letters pages in a genteel little magazine called The Lady. I found one that began:
Could you please offer any explanation as to what is happening to my rhododendron?
and it struck me as rather desperate and lonely. Alongside it I found a letter that succinctly conveyed the passing of time:
I would like a casserole recipe - but nothing too heavy as, now winter has disappeared, I have lost the desire for comfort food.
and another tender letter of disappointment of almost childlike simplicity:
Whenever I plant hyacinths out in the garden, I find that the flowers always appear to be blue no matter what colour they were previously - pink, white or cream. I find this very disappointing ...
Last week, I told you about the apocryphal Ideas for novelists website. You don't need it!
If you keep your eyes and ears open you will find fascinating, coincidental connections all around you. And one of the continuing motivations for www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk is to share those connections.
Libya, The Lady. Where next?
Take a new turning in the Labyrinth.
