I do find writing stories or articles easy enough...most especially when the gist of them come from personal memories where there is no need to be precise or exact over names and dates or places. Those I find more difficult are those which need to be factual...for instance, I began yesterday to write about the Weavers and Flax growers in the West of Ireland, but abandoned the article because I hadn't done enough research first...it isn't possible to 'pad' out history in the same way you can with a personal recollection and I couldn't even remember when the Industrial Revolution began...!
But small stories of the people we've met and some of the places we've seen are easy...it isn't so much a case of 'living in the past' more perhaps like looking through a photograph album and recalling the scents and sounds...the odd snippets, which, when joined together, make a story, whether remembering the day we drove to the Atlantic coast and passed a crocodile of small school children led by a young Priest...his cassock dusty from the road...he was carrying one of those small plastic lunch boxes much favoured by little children and flagged us down to say Hello and tell us he was from Rome...here on holidays...the children crowded round our car and told us they were away for a picnic with the Father...we're going to show him the Giants Grave they chorused...I said to be sure to tell the Father about how the Giant threw Mucklety Hill and they said they would of course...
Chance meetings lead to stories...
Perhaps some of my best recollections come from the days we had chickens and sold the eggs to passers-by...I grew herbs as well and planted them in clay pots and had Sweet Peas tied in fragrant bunches...selling eggs was how I met with Martin the Millionaire who drove an immaculate Ford Consul with a red leather bench seat in the front...he'd stop each Friday evening and buy bunches of flowers and a dozen eggs...his assorted teenage children glowering in the back seat...
And the horrible German man who complained bitterly about the egg yolks being so orange but came back week after week for more...so tired I grew of his complaints I told him the eggs were that colour because the chickens ate orange slugs...he'd never give me the right money either...always asked how much for a dozen and then he'd count it all out in small change. Very small change. He asked for a pot of sage one day and I offered him a healthy thriving plant which he scorned...it isn't Purple Sage...why do you not have Purple Sage...Huh!
Then he had a stall at the car boot sale with an old wooden butter churn that I really wanted...so I dithered because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of selling it to me...with my Orange eggs and no Purple Sage...but he spotted me and swooped with arms open wide to envelop me in a bear hug...my friend! he exclaimed...and sold me the butter churn for far less than it's actual worth...
But you see I love to write...it has never been a chore nor an obligation to me...and if what I write brings pleasure to others when they read it...then how could I possibly ask for more.
huff xxx
Chicken Farmer
Purple blotches..
